


White Lightning

by Kairos27



Series: White Lightning [1]
Category: So Nyuh Shi Dae | Girls' Generation, f(x)
Genre: Gen, Organized Crime, and other stuff too, rated for hyoyeon's language, rich jungs doing rich people things
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-08-22
Packaged: 2018-03-23 12:50:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3769192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kairos27/pseuds/Kairos27
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here are ambitions, pride, and a yearning to find something that is better off hidden.  </p><p>Or: the one where a district attorney, an FBI agent, and a bounty hunter enter a powerful billionaire's underworld empire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. never seen another one like you

_San Francisco, CA_

The appointment of Joohyun Seo to be the new San Francisco District Attorney was reported by the news media as a shake-up in city politics, especially since most people had predicted that the City Attorney, a personal friend of the Mayor, had been the top choice for the spot after the previous District Attorney had been elected Attorney General. However, the city's mayor had announced that the spot would be filled by this mostly unknown prosecutor from the District Attorney's office -- after it was revealed that the City Attorney had been caught on FBI surveillance tapes snorting cocaine at a private party. A month after the November election, the FBI made its move and arrested the City Attorney, preventing his appointment to the District Attorney's office.

When Joohyun Seo was officially presented to the public as the mayor's next choice for District Attorney in January, her background was thoroughly dug up and splashed across on the Chronicle's front page and on the local news channels. What the media found was almost too good to be true. Her academic pedigree was impressive, with degrees from Dartmouth College and Stanford Law School, where she had been the editor of the Stanford Law Review. She had an equally impressive resume: she had clerked for the chief judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, and then made her way to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, where she worked as a prosecuting attorney in the Major Narcotics Division, before returning to Northern California to join the Criminal Division of the San Francisco District Attorney's office. In the courtroom, she had an intimidating record, having successfully prosecuted every case she had worked on in Los Angeles and San Francisco. The news media was almost stupefied.

At first glance, Joohyun Seo did not cut a very imposing figure: a quiet five-foot-six, with long dark hair and baby fat stubbornly clinging to her cheeks. However, her silence did not mean she was shy. Her Stanford Law professors and classmates remembered her as an appealing yet intimidating mixture of keen instinct, elegance, idealism and ambition. "Hyun's a black hole," one of her former classmates was quoted as saying in the Chronicle. "Literally nothing escapes her."

The San Francisco City Attorney's indiscretions revived accusations of corruption and led District Attorney Seo to announce that she was committed to a crackdown on drug trafficking, transnational gang activity, and yes, political corruption in all areas of the city's government. "It is time to clean up San Francisco, and I will be the one to do it," she said to the reporters. "Our troubles, from the smell of urine in the streets to our contemptous public servants, have made us the laughingstock of this country. Mark my words well, for I have made it one of my goals to never speak empty words. Convicted felons, their million-dollar celebrity lawyers, and their supporters have thrown all they had at me, and yet all of them have lost. Those who continue to stand opposed to me should take note."

The announcement did not go over as well as it probably should have gone. There was rumbling throughout City Hall, the SFPD, and even within the DA's office, about the upstart overstepping her boundaries. One of the Chief Assistant DAs, a venerable ex-hippie named Fritz, expressed his concerns to her in private. "It's still January and you're already making enemies, Seo," he said.

"If they want to stand in my way," Joohyun replied, "then I'll make as many enemies as I like."

Fritz shrugged. "It's your funeral. Where do you want to begin?"

Joohyun settled behind her desk, running a reverent hand along the varnished wood that had seen the tenures of at least one governor and several attorneys general. "Thanks to the hard work of our police department and the FBI," she began, and Fritz's lips quirked at the wry tone in Joohyun's voice, "the City Attorney's office is now ripe for the plucking. Don't you think?"

* * *

After the City Attorney had been arrested, his office had been thrown into confusion as the city scrambled to find a successor, hampered by people jockeying to put themselves in a position to be chosen. In the meantime, San Francisco's chief of police had held a press conference about the City Attorney's arrest (which was described as 'grim' by the Associated Press). During the press conference, he had said that a special task force had gone into the house and seized several plastic sandwich bags of cocaine. When reporters asked him where the party had taken place, and who had supplied the drug, the chief's only response was, "I cannot comment on that at this time."

Later, the Chronicle reported that the cocaine that the City Attorney had been using at the party wasn't just any old coke, but a particularly high-grade cocaine known for its exceptional purity and exorbitant price tag, nicknamed 'White Lightning' -- not to be confused with the other 'white lightning', a slang term for illegally produced high-proof alcohol from Appalachia (better known as moonshine). It was an open secret that White Lightning cocaine was the current drug of choice for the wealthy and well-connected, making appearances in Bel Air mansions, Ivy League fraternity house parties, and exclusive nightclubs.

"In my time as a prosecutor," Joohyun mused over drinks at Bar Agricole with Fritz, "I have encountered White Lightning cocaine once before, and that was in Los Angeles. I had to bring a case against a LAPD narcotics detective who was accused of possession with intent to distribute. He'd been skimming from a twenty-kilo stockpile that had been seized from a body shop in Compton. They'd been hiding the stuff in the car bodies."

"Did you get the conviction?" Fritz asked.

Joohyun nodded her head once, a a quick, light movement that could have been mistaken for a toss of her hair. "Of course I did. In the end, he pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against a dealer with whom he had been working. He testified that he had so many buyers lining up for White Lightning cocaine that he even had a waiting list, even though he was selling with a thirty percent markup. A gram of cocaine costs around $100-$150, retail price; he insisted that his customers were quite happy to pay $200 for a gram of White Lightning."

Fritz whistled. "Salesman of the year, definitely." As an ex-hippie, Fritz had had plenty of encounters with drugs; he had experimented with LSD in his younger days and smoked marijuana. However, he assured everyone that he was clean, saying that he had decided long ago that he would rather not be baked in front of his granddaughters.

"It's not just that. One of my colleagues in the Organized Crime Division at the Los Angeles County DA's office called me up before the case went to trial. His federal contacts were hinting that someone has a established a monopoly on the White Lightning cocaine market, which also explains the inflated prices. He also said that the Latin American cartels and their affiliated organizations are furious at being kept out of what appears to be a very lucrative market. Some would say a niche market given the somewhat exclusive clientele, but lucrative nonetheless. The rising circulation of White Lightning cocaine in California must be very irritating to them, since both the detective and his fellow dealer were stabbed in a prison fight by members of the Mexican Mafia. That was an exciting time, I can tell you."

"Ah." Fritz waved the bartender over. "Another brown derby, please." The bartender nodded and glided away. Once he was on the other side of the bar, Fritz continued, "Since it appears that White Lightning has been circulating here, shouldn't we be seeing a rise in gang activity?"

Joohyun sipped at her Brandy Daisy. "Not so much here in the city proper. The retail dealers are mostly in the South Bay and the Central Valley. For now."

Fritz crooked a tufted white eyebrow. "You seem very certain."

"Is that so?" Joohyun smiled archly, thinking of the yellow padded envelope in the safe located in her loft on Folsom Street.

* * *

_San Jose, CA_

Special Agent Yoona Im of the FBI was having a very busy morning. At around six a.m., the FBI and San Jose Police raided a house in the Eastside and seized a half-kilo of White Lightning cocaine, as well as boxes of oxycodone pills, automatic rifles and thousands of dollars in cash. Two of the house's occupants were arrested and hustled out to the squad cars as Yoona and her colleagues combed the house for hidden contraband. One of the rooms they searched was a bedroom that clearly belonged to a teenage girl: the walls were lined with boyband posters, clippings of horribly attractive male actors from Vanity Fair, and polaroids of girlfriends posing in bikinis, their mouths pursed into duck lips.

"This is probably the room of the suspect's daughter," Agent Simon remarked, lifting the floral-print comforter on the bed and patting down the mattress. "Parents are divorced, she's lucky that she's at her mom's for the week. She goes to Mitty, and apparently her dad had been using the proceeds from his drug sales to help out with tuition."

Yoona shook her head. "Damn. They didn't apply for financial aid?"

"Yeah, but it looks like she struggled during her sophomore year -- academics, personal problems, mix them together and the result is never good -- and her aid was withdrawn." Agent Simon shrugged. "Teenagers, you know."

"I guess." Yoona snapped on a new pair of latex gloves and began rifling through an large and somewhat untidy collection of fashion magazines. "Think she was spending dad's money on these too?"

"Who knows? Ooh, look, she's got the first _Harper's Bazaar_ issue of the year," Agent Simon pointed at a stack of magazines on a shelf near Yoona's elbow. "Jessica Jung is on the cover."

Yoona lifted an eyebrow. "You read _Harper's Bazaar_?"

"Hell no. It's just that Jessica Jung is hot. Say, Im, you kind of look like her," Agent Simon joked, reaching over to grab the magazine and holding it up to Yoona's face. Yoona scowled and waved him off.

"That's totally racist, Simon."

"Don't you know who she is? Isn't she Korean, too?"

Yoona rolled her eyes. "Do I know who she is? _Do I know who she is_? As if her picture's not all over the Korean newspapers my dad reads? My relatives are friggin' nuts for her." Indeed, Yoona knew more about Jessica Jung than she cared to admit, which was inevitable given the amount of media coverage devoted to her business and personal life. One didn't need to read fashion magazines to know who she was.

* * *

Jessica Jung was a fashion designer and the CEO of Synthyris Holdings Limited, a conglomerate holding company based in Hong Kong. She had first entered the fashion world as a print model, represented by the Paris-based modelling agency, Agence Árpád, whose founder had personally scouted Jessica during her senior year at Columbia University, where she had played on the soccer team with his niece. Under his agency, Jessica Jung had modelled for labels ranging from sport and lifestyle to high-end designer products. Growing international exposure allowed her to the attention and the imagination of the public in her parents' native South Korea, and soon she had attained a sort of celebrity status throughout Asia and western Europe, where she began to forge the business connections that later allowed her to realize her dream of starting her own fashion label.

While Jessica was not an unknown in the fashion world, people were still very skeptical when she started her fashion line, Obelus, with two Parsons graduates who had (foolishly, some said) turned down positions at Bally and Ermenegildo Zegna to work with her. Clearly, whatever Jessica Jung might have lacked from not attending design school herself, she more than made up for in business acumen and the sheer amount of money she had to throw around. Balancing Synthyris and Obelus (which would become Synthyris Holdings' flagship subsidiary) seemed impossible for the delicate-looking young woman not even out of her twenties -- but the doubters were left blinking in the dust at the end of it all, when Forbes featured Jessica Jung on its cover last fall. In an era that had more than a few Generation Y billionaires to choose from, Jessica Jung was easily the prettiest (as proclaimed by the wags on Reddit, Gawker, and BuzzFeed).

Yoona scowled at the picture of Jessica on the _Harper's Bazaar_ cover. Personally, she didn't see the resemblance, even though Yoona had been voted Most Likely To Be A Model in her high school yearbook. Yoona didn't want to be a model, even though she met the usual requirements; tall, svelte, and a pretty face.

No, that life wasn't for her -- she liked eating, thanks very much. Ironically, Suzy Bae, her high school rival, was the one who became a model, splitting her time between photoshoots and A-list parties with her A-list boyfriend who modelled for Calvin Klein (according to her very public Facebook account). Jessica Jung and her kind of people were a constant reminder of who Yoona wasn't, and it bothered her a lot more than it probably should have. After all, constantly hearing weighted comments like, "A face like yours, a body like that -- and you wear frumpy pantsuits to work as a pawn of an ineffective federal agency?" grated on a person after a while. As if she should be doing something else with her life just because she had had runway-ready looks.

No way; Yoona Im did what she wanted. Or, as her dad's relatives whispered, "Just like her mother," behind her back like she couldn't hear them, but they knew she could.

It was just so dumb.

She shook her head to clear her mind of those thoughts, and followed Agent Simon out of the house, both of them lugging trash bags full of items claimed as evidence. The San Jose police had even seized the contents of the teenage girl's bedroom, which meant that even the large collection of fashion magazines were boxed up and packed into their vans.

In the distance, Yoona could see camera crews from the local news stations. No doubt they had somehow already heard that 'White Lightning' cocaine had been seized in the raid. Too many informants in the police department, Yoona supposed. Ever since the San Francisco City Attorney had gotten caught on camera using the drug, the media had been more interested in this newest iteration of the "war on drugs" than they usually were. Today they would be calling this raid another small step in the worldwide chase for the mysterious drug kingpin, the one that the American media had nicknamed 'The Chairman'. The nickname had stuck and now everyone, from the local news anchor to the director of the FBI, called him that.

The Chairman had first gained international attention after he and his organization seized control of drug trafficking operations run by various criminal groups, ranging from small-time _kkangpaes_ to MS-13 to the Serbian _mafija_. Of course, drug trafficking was only part of the Chairman's business, which also included bribery, racketeering, robbery, extortion, and murder. Although the Chairman was now widely inferred to be somehow connected to the rise of White Lightning as a recreational drug among the moneyed elite, his organization also supplied crack cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, methamphetamine, and a laundry list of prescription drugs. In the American underworld, competitive marketing of the Chairman's drugs had facilitated his power grabs; gang wars had flared up in the wake of the Chairman's gradual takeovers of incumbent criminal organizations in Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Miami, Baltimore, and New York City.

He had been steadily climbing up the FBI's Most Wanted list, but nobody knew who he was. The arrests of dealers, growers, and producers suspected to be connected to the Chairman did not reveal much about him; it appeared that even the Chairman's people did not know who he was, or exactly how his system worked. As a result, there was very little that the FBI could link back to the Chairman. It was egg on the face of law enforcement, and Yoona couldn't help be impressed by a someone who could run such an enormous network without being connected to it. For Yoona's colleagues and superiors, he was their El Dorado.

"Don't look at them, just keep walking," Agent Simon reminded Yoona in a low voice as they quickly passed by the flashing cameras. "Remember -- if the pictures end up in the paper, people will remember a face as pretty as yours."

Yoona frowned at him. He shrugged. "You're still a rookie, Im; I'm just looking out for you."

* * *

_Milan, Italy_

A Dassault Falcon 7X jet landed in Milan's Malpensa Airport at around ten in the morning, carrying the CEO of Synthyris Holdings and a small entourage that included a personal assistant and bodyguards. After going through customs, the bodyguards ushered her and her personal assistant to a Maserati Quattroporte VI, brought around by a parking valet who handed the keys to the bodyguard appointed as the driver. Before she got into the car, though, Jessica slipped a wad of euros into the valet's vest pocket, accompanied with her soft, demure smile that had brought legions of admirers to their knees.

The valet blushed a dark red and stuttered out an awestruck, "Molte grazie, signorina," before turning around and walking straight into a nearby signpost.

Worked every time.

Krystal thought it was hilarious every time Jessica pulled this trick. Jessica's PA did not, and she clucked at Jessica disapprovingly once they got into the Maserati. "That wasn't very nice, ma'am. He has a very cute face and now it'll be bruised and lopsided for at least a couple of days."

"The pole was right there, Ray. I couldn't help myself."

Jessica was a busy woman; so busy that she actually had several personal assistants as CEO of Synthyris Holdings and lead designer of Obelism by Obelus, her brand's accessories line. The personal assistant chosen to accompany her to Italy was a fine-looking older woman, just into her forties, with a predilection for Cabernet and twenty-something men. Her full given name was Rachel Sowana Baron Littlebury, but she'd shortened it to Ray Baron -- her nickname in prep school, or so she said. Before coming to work for Jessica, she had been the secretary to a New York City investment banker who was, in her words, " _a butterfaced discount Marc Jacobs wannabe who wore way too much Acqua Di Gio_ ". As a personal assistant, Ray was one of the very best at her job and extremely experienced; Ray was no stranger to the world of the filthy rich; she was discreet and well-versed in the follies of the elite cadre with too much money and not enough consideration for other people. Even better, Ray's outspoken fondness for younger men prevented Jessica's little sister from becoming too jealous of her.

"Ray, I want you to check into the hotel first, I've got some business to take care of. Get settled in, Kevin will come to fetch you in a few hours," Jessica said. She leaned forward to address the driver. "Kevin, will you head to the hotel and drop Ray off first?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Once Ray had been deposited at the Four Seasons with her luggage, Kevin turned the Maserati towards the Corso Venezia, dropping off his charge in front of a nineteenth-century Neoclassical palazzo. The first floor of the palazzo was bisected into a sunglasses boutique and a pasticerria, whose proprietors made Krystal's favorite bomboloni in the city.

The palazzo's second and third floors were office space, occupied by businesses that existed only on paper. This was Jessica's "office" in Milan, where she conducted commerce of another kind. Her bodyguards, who had been following at a respectable distance, now shimmered back into existence as they accompanied her into the building.

Boxes of designer sunglasses were neatly stacked in some of the rooms, and large industrial-size kitchen supplies in some of the others. None of these looked out of place in a building partially occupied by an eyewear shop and a pastry shop.

Men in Armani suits were waiting for them inside; one of them stepped forward and said in slightly accented English, "He has been made ready for you, signorina," before pointing to a heavy oak door.

Inside the room were several more men, surrounding someone slumped in a plastic folding chair. Around them, several pieces of modern Danish furniture were scattered throughout the room.

The seated figure looked up and saw Jessica walking towards him. Judging from his furious expression, he clearly did not like being held against his will. Confusion clouded his angry face as he took in the sight of a petite young Asian woman with delicate features, pale skin, and russet hair. Clearly, she was the last thing he expected to see.

"Mr. Alexander Mitko," Jessica began politely in English, moving to sit on the Arne Jacobsen 'Egg' chair situated across from him, "On behalf of Il Presidente, I've come here to have a little chat with you."

* * *

Mitko was one of the leaders of the Albanian Mafia currently operating in Milan, trafficking weapons, drugs, and people through Europe. The local Camorra boss had entrusted Mitko with the distribution and transportation of White Lightning cocaine, or _fulmine bianco_ , in the city and the surrounding areas.

All seemed to be well up until the end of September, when the Chairman -- Il Presidente to his operatives in Italy -- had been notified that White Lightning moving through Milan was rumored to be fake, or at least adulterated. To question the quality of White Lightning was to question the Chairman; otherwise, how could one justify White Lightning's coveted position in the market? The Chairman's power base in the underworld was partially dependent on White Lightning's status and reputation; while it would not do any real damage to the Chairman's operations on the whole, the Chairman took great pride in White Lightning's high purity and its rumored ability to create a high that was "better than a rocket to Pluto," according to some connoisseurs.

"Do you know who told Il Presidente about this, Mr. Mitko?"

"Don't know what you talk about," Mitko snapped in thickly accented English. Behind him, the men in Armani suits tensed up, ready to grab him if he made any sudden moves.

Jessica rolled her eyes and leaned back in her chair, looking for all the world like a careless young woman having a boring conversation. "You know as well as I do, Mr. Mitko, that purity levels for cocaine purchased on the street are dismal. Usually under five percent, if it goes far enough down the distribution chain, so I've heard. _Fulmine bianco_ is not supposed to be grouped in that category. Wouldn't you agree?"

Mitko scoffed, and Jessica continued, "But here you are, cutting this high quality product with mannitol and passing it off as pure so that you can sell more, without express permission. You've been holding at least a third of your inventory back, Mr. Mitko, and I want you to tell me where you put it."

"Is a lie!" Mitko shouted. "Don't know where it is! Don't know what you talk about!"

"Are you going to keep denying it?" Jessica motioned to one of her bodyguards. "Charlie, step outside and grab one of those sunglasses cases for me."

Mitko's eyes widened and he snarled wordlessly. Jessica's lips quirked upwards in a small, condescending smile as she put on a pair of latex gloves. Charlie returned and handed a case to his boss.

"Thank you, Charlie." Jessica opened the case and held up a pair of designer sunglasses. "Prada, I see," she mused thoughtfully. "I wonder what Mrs. Bertelli would think if I did this..."

With a sharp twist of her hands, the frame snapped. Part of the frame had been hollowed out, resulting in a fine white powder spilling from the shattered plastic and into Jessica's gloved palm. Jessica's smile widened.

"Well, what do we have here? It seems that Mr. Leone was correct."

"Mauricio Leone? That old man?" Mitko burst out abruptly, and Jessica nodded.

"His mother and his daughter were very sick, didn't you know? Old age for the mother and cancer for the little girl. He couldn't pay for her treatment, so that's why he got involved in this dangerous business. Even so, he was barely making ends meet, until Il Presidente made him an offer. His mother is now in a comfortable nursing home and his daughter is in remission, thanks to Il Presidente's generosity. He had no way to repay Il Presidente, except in one way," Jessica said coolly, dropping the broken sunglasses and the cocaine onto the floor. One of the men in Armani suits stepped forward, also wearing latex gloves. He swept the broken sunglasses and the cocaine into a small plastic sandwich bag. "He knew what you were doing and that you were doing it without permission. And he knew that Il Presidente would not approve. Normally, I would not bother, but Mr. Leone's accusations have, uh, certain implications...for this business in Europe as a whole. So I had to come here and see it for myself."

Jessica's shift towards using personal pronouns was not lost on Mitko, who yelled out a curse in Albanian and lunged, but large hands clamped down on his shoulders, keeping him firmly in his chair. Jessica didn't seem to notice, as she made a show of inspecting her perfectly manicured nails.

"You? You? You? You cannot!" the man spat, struggling under his captors' heavy grip. "You are -- you are -- _a little girl_!"

Jessica nodded dismissively at him as she removed her gloves. "I don't like to have people know who Il Presidente is. But you may have a look if you like, Mr. Mitko. You might as well; after all, you will not be leaving this building alive."

* * *

_New Haven, CT_

Jessica was back on her Falcon 7X the next day, returning to the United States. Ray had gotten some pretty boy's Skype information at a bar and so she was perfectly content, despite her boss' rushed schedule. Mitko's body had been deposited in a dumpster, along with the broken pair of sunglasses that had incriminated him. (The dumpster just so happened to serve the Prada headquarters, as a parting joke at the expense of Mrs. Bertelli, better known as Miuccia Prada).

When the Falcon 7X landed at Tweed New Haven, Jessica disembarked and was promptly whisked away in a hired Escalade, after she instructed Ray to wait for the jet to refuel and then fly to JFK. She kept checked her watch, a Breguet that Krystal had given to her for Christmas, even though her phone was in her other hand, lit up and showing traffic information between the airport and Yale University.

Yale's campus was less than fifteen minutes away, and Jessica found herself at Green Hall just as the doors were opening for that night's exhibition. The School of Art was holding a one-night exhibition by photography students, and some of Krystal's photographs would be part of the exhibition. Krystal would be at the venue already.

Before long, Jessica saw her younger sister drifting through the small gathering of attendees, looking bored. Well, that would be rectified quickly. She removed her sunglasses and waved as Krystal caught sight of her.

A huge, uncontrollable smile exploded all over Krystal's face, even as her mouth twisted into odd shapes in an attempt to mask her surprised delight, and she all but ran towards her older sister. "Jess!"

"Hi, baby."

Krystal stopped right in front of Jessica, letting Jessica throw her arms around Krystal first. Krystal squirmed in her sister's tight embrace. "What the hell, Jess! You said you'd be in Italy and you wouldn't be able to make it." Her eyes flickered briefly behind Jessica to glance at her sister's bodyguards, casually dressed and blending in with the attendees.

"Well, I was in Italy yesterday. Came back today just for your show, honey." Jessica reached up to pat her sister's cheek.

"I hate you."

"No, don't say that, you just hate me when I get the better of you. Don't look at me like that, you'll make me cry, and then you'll cry, and then all of your classmates will see it. You don't want that, do you, sweetie?"

Krystal bit her lip and shook her head, before finally letting her blazing smile stretch all the way across her face, her eyes and nose crinkling in happiness. If any of the other students saw it at that moment, they might not have recognized their usually stoic classmate. Jessica took Krystal's arm and looped it around her waist.

"Come on, let's go see your pictures."

* * *

Jessica had a great appreciation for beauty -- as a fashion designer and model, that was something of a prerequisite -- and by her judgment, some of the pieces in the photography exhibition were well worth a look. Tonight, however, she only really had eyes for her sister's photographs, much the same way a parent would focus the video camera on her own little nugget at a school play.

Krystal's set was titled 'The Grass Sees', which consisted of photos taken in Central Park during a recent trip to Manhattan. Krystal had put the camera down on the grass, the lens facing various angles, and zoomed in on unsuspecting subjects. The centerpiece was a surrealistic image of a sunbather's hand lying palm up on the grass, fingernails painted an extraordinary shade of red.

"Who dropped you off?" Krystal asked, leaning in to murmur in her sister's ear. She would have had to lean down more if Jessica hadn't been wearing heels.

"Tommy." Jessica tilted her head, bumping Krystal's nose with her cheek. "He brought me to this joint, but it looks like I'll be going home with you instead."

Krystal snickered, but then a flash of movement nearby caused her to stiffen, her grin slipping from her face. Jessica looked over and saw several people meandering nearby. After looking to see that her bodyguards were still within shouting distance, she asked, "What's wrong, baby?"

"Nothing." Krystal shrugged, and then she mumbled, "Just my classmates. They're hovering because they want to meet you."

Jessica laughed softly. Untangling her arm from Krystal's grasp, she put on a demure smile and whispered, "Aren't you going to introduce me to your classmates, then?"

The flat look on Krystal's face clearly showed her reluctance to introduce her sister to anybody. She huffed and turned to face a redhead in bright green skinny jeans, who looked as if he were summoning all of his courage to inch closer to them -- under the pretense of studying the photographic display next to Krystal's. "Dave, you can stop pretending to look at Lisa's photos. We've all seen them at least ten times already."

Dave the redhead practically jumped to attention at Krystal's cool tone. "Oh, hey Krystal." Behind him, a few other classmates murmured their greetings: "Hi." "Hello." "Hi, Krystal."

Jessica covered a smile with her hand; Krystal was barely restraining herself from rolling her eyes at them. As it was, Krystal merely set her glaring expression at the 'stun' setting (Krystal's glare also had a 'petrify' and a 'liquefy' setting). "This is my sister, Jessica," she gritted out behind a tight smile. Everything about the introduction was so obviously forced, but Jessica found it incredibly adorable; Dave and the others didn't even seem to notice how forced it was when Jessica smiled at them. Dave even turned as red as his hair.

"It's a pleasure to meet you," he stammered.

"Likewise." Jessica was about to reach out to shake his hand, but Krystal grabbed her sister's hands before it could happen.

"I'm so glad you could make it, Jess," she said loudly. "You've been really busy lately."

Her baby sister was so, so cute when she was jealous or overprotective for absolutely no reason at all. "Yes, I just flew in today," she said. "I didn't want to miss my baby sister's exhibition."

"My sister is a huge fan of yours, Ms. Jung!" another classmate blurted. "She wants to be a designer and she says you're an inspiration."

"Is she? I'm honored, really. Please thank her for me."

The classmate squeaked out, "Of course," and Jessica couldn't keep herself from smiling at Krystal's silent fuming as more people gravitated towards them. Even at a school as prestigious as Yale, it wasn't every day that they had the opportunity to mingle with someone who had made Forbes' "30 Under 30" list for the past two years.

* * *

"Do you not like your classmates, honey?" Jessica asked, settling into the front seat of Krystal's car. "That look on your face the whole time was so sour. Even while I was talking to the dean. You could have smiled a bit more."

Krystal scowled. "I just don't like the fact that they want to meet you because you're Jessica Jung, the CEO. And we all know the dean only showed up because he was trying to get a donation out of you. If you were just like anyone else, he wouldn't have bothered coming."

"You don't hide your possessiveness well."

"Don't worry about what they think of me. They won't mess with me."

"I'll be the one messing with them if they do. But I doubt they'll try; I think some people find your chip-on-your-shoulder attitude attractive because you're so pretty, baby." Jessica's eyes fluttered shut and she let out a long sigh. "I got sleep on the plane, but I'm still so tired."

Krystal started the car. "We'll be home soon."

Whenever Krystal was at school, she lived in a four-bedroom brick house in the Westville neighborhood, close to the Hopkins School -- around a ten minute drive from the west side of campus. The house was a mix of French country and Tudor styles, built in the late 1920s. Jessica had bought the house when Krystal had chosen to attend Yale, and she often remarked that it had been one of the cheaper real estate purchases she had made in recent memory (at a little more than half a million dollars). New Haven wasn't exactly a safe city, but Jessica had her bodyguards set up a security perimeter wherever Krystal went. Per Krystal's preference, they kept out of sight.

Even though the drive was short, Jessica fell asleep anyway. As badly as Krystal wanted to look over at her sister, she studiously kept her eyes on the road; the recent spring snow had been cleared away, but she still had to be careful.

It didn't have to be said that Jessica was all Krystal had, and vice versa; the money was nice, but it was all just for decoration.

They had been orphans since Jessica's freshman year at Columbia, and even with all of the attention Jessica had received since entering the fashion world, nobody really knew or saw the real her. Nobody except Krystal, who had seen all that Jessica had to do in order to get Obelus off the ground. There were long nights spent sketching, cutting and sewing and measuring, and of days spent negotiating contracts, holding ten-hour business meetings without any breaks, and spending more time in the air than on the ground. Her modelling contracts were temporarily cut back to allow her to attend Columbia Business School, where she partnered with graduate students from the Parsons School of Design on their projects. At the same time, Jessica was growing Synthyris Holdings out of her own investments and trying to guide Krystal through the teenage years despite not being out of them herself, though it was marginally helpful that Krystal was at boarding school (both she and Jessica had attended Exeter). And then there was her sister's other business -- the shadowy empire that she had begun to build the day she found and killed their parents' murderer.

For all that she had gone through and all that she had done and still had to do, Jessica made a point to always be present and available for Krystal, even when they were separated by continents. Krystal only wanted to do the same for her. Jessica worked herself into the ground and gave so much of herself to her sister and to her work, yet people only saw the finished product, an indestructible elegance veiled in unbreakable ice. That was what they were supposed to see -- Jessica had to be cold and calculating if she wanted to survive.

Krystal pulled into the driveway of the house and turned off the engine. She paused for a moment to take in the sight of her sister bundled up in her peacoat, sleeping, with her perfectly styled hair now mussed and falling into her face. Nobody could see this but Krystal, and perhaps that was on purpose; Jessica, for all of her fame and her polite demeanor, would not let anyone else see the soft heart and bright eyes that Krystal knew so well. Jessica simply could not risk anyone else seeing it.

"Ugh, damn it," Krystal huffed at herself, running her jacket sleeve over her suddenly wet eyes. She always got like this when she had these kind of thoughts, and it was embarrassing even with nobody around to witness it. Clearing her throat, she shook Jessica's shoulder. "Jess, wake up. We're home."

Jessica let out a noise that was something between a purr and a growl, and Krystal was briefly reminded of a _Tatler_ article that had described her sister as " _so essentially, so emphatically feline_ ," and she grinned at the memory of the laugh they'd had over that piece, all of her serious thoughts banished for the moment. "Hey, sleepyhead."

"Sweetie?" Jessica's eyes blinked open. She stared at her little sister and her mouth quirked downward. "Were you crying?"

Well, damn. Jessica knew Krystal far too well for Krystal's liking sometimes. "No, I wasn't. Let's go inside."

"You were smiling but the eyes don't lie. Are you bipolar?"

"Shut up."

"There's nothing wrong with crying now and then," Jessica said, unbuckling her seatbelt. "Especially if it's over me," she added coquettishly.

"Ha ha, very funny. I told you I don't like crying, Jess. Because every time I cry, you end up crying too and that makes me feel like shit."

"Oh, you." Jessica leaned in and kissed Krystal's cheek with a theatrical smack of her lips, and then opened her car door. "Race you inside."

Trust Jessica to turn the mood around. "You're on!" Krystal jumped out of the driver's side, but she had to pause to lock the car and Jessica was already running up the driveway. The quiet streets echoed with their laughter.

Krystal thought it was the prettiest sound in the world.

* * *

_Los Angeles, CA_

No matter how hard she tried (and she tried), Hyoyeon simply could not find a decent slice of pizza in California. Everyone got so pissy when she said so, but really, how could they blame her? She was from Queens, for God's sake. Well, okay, Los Angeles might have some decent pastrami, but it also had no fucking seasons, except 'warm' and 'warmer'. Hyoyeon was by no means a lover of snow, but California took it to another level.

The only reason Hyoyeon had even gone to Los Angeles was for work, and for the fresh start that she knew she needed. As much as she loved her home state (and as much as she thought Cali was overrated), she knew she just couldn't stay in New York.

Being a convicted felon was bullshit; Hyoyeon couldn't vote, buy a gun, or receive government assistance. People wouldn't hire a convicted felon, and landlords wouldn't rent to them. Her family -- well, the less said about them, the better, especially since her dad wanted to pretend she never existed. She got an early release, but as long as she lived she'd be a convicted felon in the eyes of the great state of New York, and dead to her dad. Her mom, the devoted wife, would feel obligated to follow Dad's example even if she didn't agree. It was Mingu who had it the hardest -- he was just a kid, and here he was, caught in the middle. Hyoyeon regretted that part the most.

At least some of Hyoyeon's friends still hung around even after she'd been locked up for some years, including her ex, Jay. Jay was a dick -- he'd once called the cops on Hyoyeon when she'd poked him in the eyes after a beer pong session got out of hand -- but even with all of his shit he still tried to be a good friend. Jay had more money than all of Hyoyeon's friends combined, and he had hired the lawyers that managed to reduce Hyoyeon's jail sentence from ten years to six years. Hyoyeon had never been keen on a 9 to 5 desk job, and he'd asked around and a friend of a friend of a friend who lived in LA got in touch. The job she had been offered, and eventually taken, was as far from a desk job as she could get -- a bail enforcement agent. Or, as some people liked to put it, a bounty hunter.

Hyoyeon's Converses slapped against the warm pavement as she ran, the Southern California sun beating down on her bleached blonde head. She was a natural athlete, which often came in handy whenever a bail jumper decided to make a run for it, or put up a fight. This particular bail jumper had been ferreted out of a house in Harvard Park and was now leading them on a foot chase through the neighborhood.

Her two-way radio crackled to life; Pinky, her colleague, was barking something about heading towards Western Avenue to cut their suspect off. Hyoyeon didn't even bother to answer Pinky. Grabbing the radio, she yanked it from its belt clip and flung it as hard as she could towards the suspect.

The heavy chunk of plastic and electronics didn't hit the runner, but it did the next best thing -- it landed under his foot and caused him to stumble and fall flat on the sidewalk. Before he could get up, Hyoyeon had pounced. "Gotcha, you little ass!"

* * *

Since Hyoyeon had basically done all of the legwork in bringing in the bail jumper, Pinky was nice enough to give Hyoyeon a ride to Venice, where Jay had invited Hyoyeon to the "all night every night" happy hour at Chaya.

Hyoyeon had told Jay that after he'd called the cops on her that one time, they were never ever ever getting back together. Like the T-Swift song. But they could still be friends now and then, especially when her ex could hook her up with spicy tuna rolls and pineapple-infused vodka. For free, since Jay always insisted on paying.

"How was work?" Jay asked.

Hyoyeon shrugged. "Caught a runner today. He'd been hiding out at his brother's house. Tripped him up and reeled him in. No biggie."

Jay grinned and nudged her shoulder. "Way to go, tiger."

"Fuck off with that nickname already, I told you I don't like it when you get all Mary Jane to my Peter Parker." Not that she would ever tell this to Jay, but Hyoyeon's father used to call her 'tiger'. The nickname didn't exactly bring out the happy memories.

Jay held up his hands in surrender. "Fine, fine. Just don't poke my eyes out, babe."

"You're such a dumbfuck." Hyoyeon rolled her eyes spectacularly and poured herself some more sake. She missed her other friends. Min was the only one still in the LA area; Jo Kwon had moved to Chicago, Fei and Jia to Vancouver, and Junho had gone back to New Jersey. There were some Thai celebrities who'd rolled into town a couple weeks ago -- Jay knew some of them and honestly they were a pretty fun crowd -- but they'd moved on to greener pastures out East. It was kind of really pathetic, having only her whiny bitch of an ex to hang out with when Min was at work.

Jay idly ran his finger across the rim of his glass. "Do you know why I asked you out today?"

"Of course I don't. Did I even ask you why? Did I even need a reason? Nobody turns down a free happy hour." Hyoyeon frowned at him. "You're not trying to sweeten me up and ask me out again, are you? I told you, Jay. Never ever ever. I even downloaded the Taylor song onto your iTunes. Listen to it for once and get the message already."

"Geez, babe, calm down. I got the message just fine."

"Then fucking get on with it already."

Jay cleared his throat. "So I got a phone call this morning. I don't know how he got my number, but it...it was your brother."

Hyoyeon gaped at him. The warm buzz from the alcohol immediately vanished as cold dread slithered down her spine. "My brother, Mingu? Jay, what the fuck? How'd he know your number?"

"He didn't say. But he was clearly desperate, if he called me of all people. I don't think your family liked me."

"Jay, if you don't hurry up and spill your shit, I'll do more than fucking poke your damn eyeballs out!" The bartenders and a few patrons nervously glanced over at them, but Hyoyeon didn't care that they heard.

At that moment, Jay apparently grew a brain that actually worked. "Hyo, babe, I think it's better if I tell you somewhere that's...not here. Come on."

"We've been drinking, you asshole, you can't fucking drive--"

"I'll call a taxi. Come on."

* * *

Hyoyeon and Jay ended up on the beach, which was literally less than two blocks away from Chaya. The sun was setting into the horizon and throwing out some really beautiful colors, but Hyoyeon didn't notice any of it.

"Okay, dickhead. Spill. Why did my brother call you?"

Jay's face changed into something resembling sympathy. Oh no, no no no. Something bad had definitely happened. Scenarios began to fly through Hyoyeon's head. Had there been an accident? Was her mom sick?

"Your father has been arrested for insurance fraud."

For a long time, Hyoyeon was struck dumb.

Insurance fraud. What the fuck? Her _dad_? And here she was thinking that her dad was so ashamed of her because she was a convicted felon, when he was probably a criminal himself. The irony was so thick and so bitter that it could've choked her.

Jay continued, "Your brother couldn't tell me much, but apparently your father has been defrauding New York State's worker's comp program for a while now. He works in construction, right? He claimed he was injured while working on a project in Brooklyn. The insurance companies claim they have evidence that he was claiming worker's comp when he wasn't really injured. Your brother says your father did it in order to settle his gambling debts."

Gambling. God damn it. Her father had been gambling their family's money away?

When Hyoyeon finally found her voice, it was thin and high and it sounded like she was going hysterical. "But...what about my mom?"

"Your brother didn't say exactly how she was doing, but I would assume that she isn't taking it very well. He did say to tell you not to come rushing back, it might overwhelm her right now."

"Why not? If Dad's in jail, then he can't object to me coming back. What if Mom needs me?" Hyoyeon paced the sand frantically.

Jay grabbed her shoulders. "She's not alone, okay? Your brother's there."

"He's just a kid!"

"He's in college, Hyo. He's not a kid anymore."

"Fuck you, Jay!" Hyoyeon shoved him away and swiped angrily at the tears that had suddenly begun to slip down her face.

"Look, your brother said he called me because he didn't know who else to turn to. He knew I'd helped with your, uh, legal team, and he wanted some advice. He said your parents wouldn't be happy if he knew he'd called me."

"Why? Because they knew you'd tell me? Or because you're an asshole?"

"Probably both. Either way, what your brother was worried about is what happens if your dad gets convicted. He'll get jail time, of course."

"I hope he gets it," Hyoyeon snarled, turning her back so that Jay won't see her crying. Blame it on gravity; blame it on being a girl. Fuck.

"He'll have to pay restitution, too," Jay added. "If he'd been collecting worker's comp to gamble it away, let's hope he hasn't spent it all."

"If he did, I don't think my mom has that kind of money." Hyoyeon buried her face in her hands. "What the fuck am I going to do?"

"Hyo --"

"I don't want your help, Jay. I know Mingu called you, but I'm telling you right now, back off."

"Aren't we friends, Hyo? This is what friends do. Help each other. I've got money."

"Yeah, sure, your stepdad's money, you mean." Hyoyeon shook her head, fury suddenly draining from her. "Look. I know I'm a selfish bitch, but I really, really, really fucking hate that I owe you, of all people, for everything I have right now: my job, my freedom, all that shit. Because you're also the reason I already had a record when they nabbed me for bashing Campbell's face in. It didn't do me any favors in court. I can't forget that. I don't want my family to owe you."

Jay pressed his mouth into a thin line. "I get it, Hyo. You're just trying to save your pride."

"I want my dad to know what it feels like, to be locked up and all that shit." Hyoyeon turned towards the fading sunlight as the sun slipped lower and lower. "But my mom and Mingu don't deserve to go through this twice. Catching bail jumpers doesn't pay enough and -- and I wish my family and I had a choice other than asking you for help!" Frustrated, she kicked the sand under her feet.

"You still want me to back off?"

"Yeah. No. I don't know! Just...give me some fucking time to think, okay?"

"Hyo, come on -- "

"I said, I need some fucking time to fucking think. Leave me alone. I'm a hardened ex-jailbird, remember? Don't worry about me, I'm not going to get disoriented and walk in front of freeway traffic like that one kid on the news. Go get a taxi, go home."

Jay kept protesting, but he finally had enough of Hyoyeon's needling and left (after swearing that he'd keep calling Min to make sure Hyoyeon got home).

* * *

Hyoyeon decided to forego the taxi and ended up walking home to Culver City, trying to sweat out the alcohol so that she could think. It didn't do much good -- she wracked her brain and came up with absolutely nothing, except try to get Mingu's number from Jay and contact her brother, herself. Why hadn't he asked Jay to put him in touch with her? Did Mingu hate her too?

When she walked into her front door, Min was already there, and as expected, Min lit into her friend. Hyoyeon had only walked for three hours, from Venice to Culver City, and yet --

"Where the FUCK were you? Jay's been blowing up my God damn phone!"

"Nowhere you need to worry about." Hyoyeon drifted over to the kitchen counter, where a padded yellow envelope was sitting among the other bits and pieces of mail. To her surprise, it was addressed to her. She wasn't expecting anything.

"Seriously, Hyoyeon..."

Hyoyeon waved Min away. "Whatever he told you, Jay's being an ass. I have some personal stuff going on right now. I'll tell you about it if you just leave me alone for like an hour, please."

"Yeah, about your brother calling?"

That fucking bastard. "He told you? Oh my God, of course he fucking did. What the fuck." Hyoyeon threw up her hands. "I can't even tell my own friends my own fucking business. This is his way of getting back at me. God damn it, Mingu, why'd you call him?"

"Hyo, I do trust that you were going to tell me eventually."

"Now you'll never know if I really was going to, huh?" Hyoyeon grabbed the padded yellow envelope and swept out of the kitchen.

Once in the relative privacy of her room, she ripped open the envelope. An unmarked DVD case fell out, along with a typed letter. There was no signature, and the return address was a PO Box in Minneapolis.

_Dear Ms. Kim. Your father is currently being held on charges of insurance fraud. Enclosed you will find a copy of the video evidence held by the prosecutor. If you want us to destroy the evidence before the case goes to trial, destroy the copy and mail the empty case back to us. We will wipe the data and the case against your father will fall apart. If, however, you choose to let the case stand, you may keep it. The decision is yours._

_Best regards._  
_A friend._

Hyoyeon sat down on her bed, dumbfounded.

* * *

"Speak."

"It's me. The DVD case came back. It's empty..."

"All right then."

"But there was also a note in it."

"What did it say?"

"It said, and I quote, ' _Who the fuck are you people?_ '"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just in time for Jessica's birthday. Love you and miss you, my one and only snowqueen.
> 
> "Blame it on gravity; blame it on being a girl" is from the Old 97's song, 'No Baby I'.


	2. hate it when you leave but i love when you arrive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not in time for Sunny's birthday, too early for Yoona's. Oh well. Please don't drag me for the grammatical error in the summary that I didn't get around to fixing until today.
> 
> Previews of upcoming chapters and other media for this story can be found at http://thejunggenome.tumblr.com/

_New Haven, CT_

Daylight stepped gently into Krystal's bedroom, softened by the filter of the window curtains. Jessica preferred heavy curtains that completely blocked out the sunlight, but Krystal spent enough time in darkrooms, she didn't need to sleep in one. A mere whisper of light was all it took to pry Krystal's eyes open, only to find her sister's hair draped all in a tangle around Krystal's face and neck, the scent of Asprey Purple Water shampoo settled all around them. Her pert nose was pressed lightly against the steady, gentle thud of Krystal's carotid pulse.

Jessica had been a heavy sleeper when they were younger, before their parents had died. With everything she had taken on herself since then, Jessica occasionally suffered from bouts of insomnia. Therefore, it was no surprise to Krystal that when her sister did manage to fall asleep, nothing short of a locomotive crashing through the bedroom would have induced Jessica to wake up, much less get out of bed.

Admittedly, Krystal wasn't much better; she usually hit the snooze button on her phone five times before she could be induced to open her eyes. Since Krystal didn't have class that morning (and even if she did she would have had no intention of attending it), she had not set her alarm at all last night.

Krystal stretched languidly, which required some rearrangement of limbs because of her sister's sleeping position on top of her. With her shoulder joints sufficiently popped and her mouth stretched in a leonine yawn, she sat up and reached for one of Jessica's old Columbia University t-shirts, draped over her nearby desk chair, and pulled it over her head. The shirt smelled like her sister -- warm skin dusted with Krystal's L'Occitane body lotion, and faint, barely-there smatterings of Arpège perfume. With the heater purring in the background, Krystal felt little need to put on much else.

Near Krystal's desk stood a Brunswick Panatrope record player, which Jessica had bought for her at an estate auction in Nantucket last year. Krystal had had it painstakingly restored to mint condition so that it could play her rapidly-growing collection of shellac and vinyl records. She slipped out of bed and put a record on the Panatrope.

 _The very thought of you_  
_And I forget to do_  
_Those little ordinary things, that everyone ought to do_

Billie Holiday's smooth, buttery vocals filled the bedroom as Krystal tiptoed her way back to the bed and slid back under the covers. Jessica's lashes fluttered, indicating that she was on the verge of awakening. Krystal thought that her sister had it pretty good -- in her opinion, there were few things better than waking up in a warm bed to the sound of Lady Day on an overcast morning.

Jessica finally cracked open a bleary eye as Krystal cuddled up to her, leaning in to peck her sister's cheek and lipping the lyrics, _I'm living in a kind of daydream, I'm happy as a queen against the pale skin_. Jessica rolled her eyes sleepily and withdrew an arm from under the comforter, swatting her sister like a kitten would bat at a ball of yarn. Her hand landed with a plop on Krystal's shoulder.

"You have my shirt on," Jessica observed, her voice sleep-thick and raspy.

Krystal lifted an eyebrow, as if challenging her to make an issue of it. "Uh-huh."

Jessica's fingers plucked at the light blue fabric for a few thoughtful seconds before she apparently decided to let it go and rolled over onto her back. Krystal watched intently as her sister yawned and rubbed some of the crud out of her eyes with an adorably balled-up fist. Jessica was not only harder to wake up than Krystal was, but she was also a lot noisier when she did manage to wake up -- all of those sleepy, heart-melting snuffles and squeaky complaints as she rolled about the bed in search of the bathrobe she'd worn the night before.

"Here," Krystal pulled the bathrobe out from the tangled blankets and dropped it on Jessica. Jessica huffed and wrapped it around herself before swinging her legs over the side of the bed.  

"Morning to you too, sis."

"Morning, brat."

Krystal's lips turned downward in a pout that she basically never showed to anyone else but Jessica; Jessica sometimes said that this was because the world just wasn't deserving of that wonderful devastation. "That's not what you said last night."

As usual, Jessica visibly softened at her sister’s sad little frown. "Baby," she murmured, reaching out and stroking Krystal's hair. "Is that more like it?"

Her softness both delighted and worried Krystal. Krystal did not want to be a weakness for Jessica, as romantic as it would've sounded in anybody else's situation. Jessica simply could not afford to be weak. The only solution, therefore, was to be her sister’s best asset and protector.

Which meant that they were going to have to have a talk about what Jessica had been doing in Milan.

She took Jessica’s hand and folded it in her own. “Yeah, Jess.”

Jessica smiled at her knowingly and released their hands before opening the bedroom door and padding towards the bathroom. Before long, Krystal heard her singing along to the record over the sound of running water, her voice still a little throaty from sleep:

 _I see your face in every flower_  
_Your eyes in stars above_  
_It's just the thought of you, the very thought of you, my love_

* * *

Jessica had always wanted Krystal to have a normal life; ‘normal’ meaning comfortable and socially fulfilling, without the need to constantly look over her shoulder. It just seemed safer that way. Krystal, however, wanted none of it. For one thing, Krystal didn’t really enjoy being sociable, and Jessica was of the opinion that more people would dislike Krystal if she weren't so pretty. For another, Krystal wanted to follow Jessica wherever she went; it was true when they were little and it was true now. And Krystal intended to follow Jessica into the business after she graduated from Yale, which was why she was constantly peppering Jessica with questions about what happened in Milan. 

“So you’re sure there won’t be any future problems from that corner?”

“Well, not from the Albanians. They already had someone ready to step up and succeed Mitko. It’s the Camorra who might not like their choice, but they've already given up too much to the Albanians. Mitko's successor ought to be smart enough to stick to the rules this time. After all, someone else is now paying his underlings’ salaries.”

They were sitting together at the kitchen counter, perched on black lacquer Lem bar stools (Krystal had a taste for modern European furniture, particularly in monochrome). Krystal leaned forward and rests her chin on her hand, turning her face to look at her sister. “I wish you had let me take care of him.”

“You had school.”

“School is stupid.”

“Krystal…”

“I know you want me to be safe but I’m a big kid now, Jess.”

Jessica sighed, stirring the cereal in her bowl of milk. “Says the kid who still eats sugary Malt-O-Meal cereals straight out of the bag.”

They didn't see eye to eye on this -- what Jessica wanted for Krystal and what Krystal wanted for herself -- and this basic disagreement was the main cause of their infrequent domestic disturbances. Jessica hated it when Krystal was annoyed or angry with her, and she always wanted to make Krystal happy, but there was no way she wanted Krystal to endanger herself in the process.

“Jess, I’m already working for you whether you like it or not. Remind me, who found a way to put away those Corsican guys who were trying to horn in on our business in Marseille? Now we’ve acquired more than half of all of their business holdings on the French Riviera, and you just need to say the word if you want all of it. I can make it happen, I swear. I’ve been really careful. They still think some Macedonians were behind it, last I heard.”

Jessica didn’t have much an argument against that. “I should never have let you have Joachim’s hard drives,” she groused. Poor Joachim, whom she had inherited as part of the business that she had taken by force from the people who had ordered her parents’ deaths. Joachim had been loyal, but then he was assassinated in Sofia during those first tumultuous, tug-of-war years when Jessica had fought to keep her newly won domain from being ripped out of her inexperienced hands.

She had come a long way since then, consolidating her power and ruling with an iron scepter. However, Jessica had made more than a lifetime’s share of enemies along the way, and it was not a surprise that Krystal constantly made her worries known. “I still think you should have told me about this so that I could go there. People don’t really know who I am or what I look like, but people are more likely to recognize you.”

“You know I don’t always put myself out there like that. I showed up in person to make sure Mitko realized the extent of his failure before I put him down. Besides, I also had a legitimate business appointment in the city. Two birds with one stone and all that.”

Krystal was not buying it. “I know it’s easy it is to buy silence over there,” she muttered. “But...like I said, people know who you are. I just want you to be careful.”

“The same goes for you, honey.”

“Do I have your permission to destroy them if someone sells you out?”

Jessica let her spoon slide gently back into her bowl and sink halfway into the milk and soggy cereal. “Maybe when you’re older.”

“Stop babying me! You promised last summer, you said you would let me work for you again this summer too. Last week of classes is the second to last week in April. If I turn in my portfolio early enough, I can start my summer job after we go to Louisville.”

Krystal said this so earnestly that Jessica couldn't even be annoyed at her for talking back.

"We'll see."

* * *

_San Jose, CA_

After the drug bust in the Eastside, Yoona honestly did not expect to be involved in questioning the teenage daughter whose room she and Agent Simon had searched during the raid. The local police, fiercely protective of their authority, were not entirely appreciative of the FBI’s involvement in the case (were they ever?), even though it seemed inevitable that federal law would come into play -- after all, the White Lightning must have come over the Mexican border -- but Agent Simon had warned Yoona to expect some stonewalling and attitude from the police department. “I wouldn't blame the whole department, actually, I would blame the new chief, he’s a proud little ass,” he had confided. “We didn't have this problem before he got promoted.”

“Maybe he just hates our boss.”

“Everyone hates our boss. That doesn't count.”

Despite these expectations, Yoona was eventually assigned to interrogate the defendant’s teenage daughter, now a junior at Archbishop Mitty. Her boss had seized the opportunity to make their presence known in the investigation, and as a result, Yoona was the one being thrust into duty. Agent Simon had volunteered to go with her, but their boss’ opinion was that the girl might clam up out of fear if she got double-teamed.

“Why? Am I really not scary by myself?” she grumbled to herself as she straightened her blazer in front of the interrogation room.

That, she knew, was false. Being scary had nothing to do with it. It was her face, her God damned pretty face, that had something to do with it. More than once, she had heard someone describe her beauty as “natural and automatic,” which was horribly embarrassing -- but her face seemed to encourage people to talk because they wanted to please or impress her.

Even so, teenagers were not the easiest people in the world to deal with, especially when one wanted them to answer questions that they likely didn’t feel like answering. She sighed. “Here goes.”

* * *

 

Since Cristina Diaz was a minor, her mother was in the room with her. Yoona smiled politely at them, taking a seat across the table. “Hello, Cristina. Hello, Ms. Mendez. I’m Agent Yoona Im, of the FBI. Is it all right if I ask you a few questions?”

“I might as well. If I don’t, you guys will probably arrest me,” was the sulky answer. Cristina had her hair in a messy bun, lips painted pale red and eyes made up in inky black, and she wore a sky blue velour tracksuit studded with rhinestones. Ms. Mendez, her mother, was a tired-looking woman wearing an outfit that suggested that she was a service employee. Yoona wondered if Ms. Mendez was missing work to be here. 

“We’re not going to arrest you, unless we find out that you did something wrong,” Yoona reassured her. “So far, we’re only trying to figure out if your father has committed a crime.”

“Of course he did,” Cristina snapped. “Isn't selling drugs a crime?”

“So you believe your father was selling cocaine?”

“Of course I believe that.”

“Did you know that he was keeping drugs and weapons in the house?”

Cristina shifted in her chair. “No. I didn't like staying at his house anyway. I only had to stay there sometimes, whenever my mom had to work double shifts.”

“Is this true, Ms. Mendez?” Yoona asked gently.

Ms. Mendez nodded and said, “Yes.”

Yoona turned back to Cristina. “Did you or your mother know that your father was using drug money to pay for your school tuition?”

“I thought that it was suspicious for him to have that much money,” Ms. Mendez said, “but I thought it was pointless to ask him. He -- he would say, ‘This is why I divorced you, you ask too many questions.’ My daughter wanted to stay in her school so badly, and I thought that, despite our relationship, that he was just trying to be a good father.”

“He didn’t do a very good job of it, if he was storing drugs and guns in the house,” Cristina scoffed. “Just because he pays my tuition and bought me stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

Cristina rolled her eyes. “He’d buy fashion magazines and stuff for me and put them in my room. I don’t have time to read all of those. But what a girl really wants is an allowance so that she can go to the mall with her friends, you know?”

“Oh. My colleague noticed that there were a lot of those magazines in your room.”

"My dad got me subscriptions to some of them. They kept coming to the house, with my name on the address and everything. But I never touched them. He just put them in my room and I just let them pile up, I didn't even bother to move them around. Like I already said, I didn't want them. He was rarely ever in my life after my parents got divorced, how would he know what I liked?"

"Did you tell him to stop the subscriptions? And if they were piling up, wouldn't you want to throw them away?"

"I didn't want to talk to him too much." Cristina slouched lower into her chair. “And I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that I’d noticed them, so I didn't touch them. I don’t know why he would buy those for me. I mean, yeah, I guess he let me decorate my room because he wanted me to feel at home there, but why would I want fashion magazines? Even if I wanted to read them, I can always read them online.”

“Well okay.” Thoughts began to rise in Yoona's head, and she mentally filed them away for later. Cristina’s actions regarding the magazines didn’t quite make sense to her but then again, Cristina was a teenager and teenagers were unpredictable. “Anyway, we haven’t found anything of interest in your room,” Yoona said, conveniently not mentioning that they had confiscated those magazines, “and you say yourself that you had no prior knowledge of the contraband in your father’s house. I guess there isn’t much else you can tell me, is there?”

* * *

"So how did it go?" 

Yoona didn't look up from perusing the shelves stacked high with boxes of objects seized as evidence. The stacks were literally a work hazard waiting to happen, but their next inspection wasn't until next month. "Really, Simon? You were there in the meeting when I debriefed Hurst on what Miss Diaz said; she says she didn't know her dad was moving drugs until now, and that he tried to be a father to her but she wouldn't have any of it."

Agent Simon shrugged. "Yeah, I got that. But what do you really think?"

"Why do you want to know? You going to tattle on me?" Yoona retorted, more sharply than she intended.

"Maybe if it's worth tattling about. But come on, Im. We're all supposed to be working this case together and if you've got ideas..."

"What makes you think I got ideas?"

"Why else would you be down here in evidence, during your lunch break? You never skip lunch if you don't have to. Loomis offered to take you out for burritos at that taco truck you like so much and here you are."

Yoona scoffed. "Loomis has got a bet going that he can take me out on a date. I'm not falling into that trap. Not even for burritos."

"Can't blame him, with a face like yours."

"Unwelcome comment. That's borderline harassment."

Agent Simon held up his hands. "Fine, Im. But back to my original question. Is there something on your mind about the case?"

In fact, Yoona's brain had conjured up several threads, weaving a train of thought that had led her right back to the fashion magazines taken from Cristina Diaz' room. "I just wanted to see if this hunch I have is worth anything."

"Oooh, a hunch! I knew you had an idea."

"Seriously, go away. If it's something...good, I'll tell you."

Seeing that Yoona wasn't budging, Agent Simon finally left. Yoona located the box that held the fashion magazines, and brought it to a nearby table to lay them out. Despite there being quite a lot of magazines, which were much heavier than they looked, Yoona lifted the box easily. She pulled on a fresh pair of latex gloves and set to work. The magazines were all glossy and stiff, just as if they had never been read.

* * *

The reason she hadn't been forthcoming to Agent Simon was because she knew this was the longest of shots, so long that even Annie Oakley wouldn't be interested in making it.

And yet...

Sure, the case against Norman Diaz was basically cut and dried; he'd been caught red-handed in the house, and people had given evidence against him. However, the presence of White Lightning in his house meant that the Chairman's shadow had, once again, rounded the corner ahead of the FBI. 

Yoona had taken up his trail of breadcrumbs -- a trail that might not even be a trail at all, except in her head. Making wild conjectures, the kind that Yoona had been good at making ever since she was a child, were more of a weakness than a strength, according to her boss and her colleagues. That was why she usually kept them to herself.

Cristina had claimed to be uninterested in the magazines, to the point where she claimed that she didn't even touch them. However, when she and Agent Simon had found them, they were piled on the floor and bookshelves in a way that wasn't messy, per se, but it wasn't very neat, either. If what Cristina said was true -- that she never touched the magazines -- then her father, Norman, must have put them there like that. However, it didn't seem in line with what they had seen in the rest of the house, which was shockingly spic and span for a single man (that is, until the local police had turned everything upside down looking for evidence). The drugs and guns that they had found had been carefully stored in cleanly wrapped bundles in a hollowed-out shell of a Maytag washing machine. Inside the house, everything was in its proper place -- dishes put away nicely in the cupboards and chairs pushed in. Even the beer in the refrigerator was lined up as neatly as a row of soldiers on parade.

From previous interrogations, Yoona knew that Norman had said that he lived alone in the house and rarely had visitors due to the contraband that he was hiding. The logical conclusion would be that he was an organized person by nature. Maybe he truly respected his daughter's space enough to let her be even just a little bit untidy. Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe he, or someone else, had been rummaging through those magazines, or Cristina had lied (thoughtlessly or not) about not touching them. This tiny detail could mean absolutely nothing -- or there was the tiny chance that it could mean _something_.

Unfortunately, her lunch break passed without any discoveries (although she did learn about what shades of lipstick would go best with her particular hair color), and nobody came looking for her. It was all very discouraging and she felt rather foolish, which made her glad that she hadn't told Agent Simon about her thoughts.

As Yoona flipped through last June's issue of _Elle_ , a scrap of paper suddenly fell from one of the pages and fluttered to the floor.

Yoona's pulse jumped. Carefully setting the magazine down, she knelt and picked up the piece of paper, barely three inches by two inches and seemingly ripped from a sheet of notebook paper. Four digits were printed on the paper in a blocky script:

**1024**

* * *

 "We have to ask the suspect about this, sir."

Yoona's boss, Supervisory Special Agent Malachi Hurst, looked impassively at the fragment of notebook paper that Yoona had presented to him. "You believe this is important enough, Agent Im?" he asked in his characteristically indifferent voice.

"I do."

"Explain."

Reluctantly, Yoona retraced her trail of thinking that brought her to the fashion magazines taken from Cristina's room.

Hurst just gazed at her impassively throughout the whole thing, and although Yoona had felt vindicated when she'd discovered the scrap of paper, she began to feel like she had made a blunder, revealing all of this to an unimpressed-looking boss.  

Then Hurst spoke. "You are completely insane, Im."

Despite the fact that Hurst had always tended to be like this -- intimidating, blunt, and sometimes downright scornful -- Yoona couldn't help but bristle at this. "Sir --"

"Your conjecture makes a rather large leap, does it not? Do you deny that?”

“Sir, I know that I tend to make those kinds of inferences, but --”

“So you admit it. Well, your conjecture hinges on the idea that our suspect is a neat, organized man who cleans up meticulously after himself, or has someone do it for him, and would likely not abide any untidiness, not even in his daughter’s room.” Hurst fixed Yoona with a gimlet stare. “Yet he’s never said anything of the sort. However, as we discussed earlier, our friends at the SJPD were a bit sloppy in their investigation, sloppier than I can abide, anyway. But, I do agree that this...piece of paper is out of place in a magazine that was supposedly never opened by the intended recipient, namely, Norman Diaz's daughter. What do you think it is?"

Yoona inclined her head. "I was thinking a code. Or a numerical key for a cipher."

"Why am I not surprised that you would think of it that way?" Hurst steepled his fingers and looked up thoughtfully at the ceiling of his office. “Which page did it fall out from, Im?”

Stumped, Yoona was silent.

"Well? No? Don’t know, do you? You may not longer be a probationary agent, Im, but you are still a rookie in every sense of the word. Suppose you are correct and this scrap of paper is a key to a cipher, wouldn't you want to know as much detail as possible surrounding its discovery if you wanted every hint you could get in order to crack it? Eh? Am I not correct, Im? Tell me.”

When Yoona did not answer, Hurst continued, “If White Lightning cocaine wasn't involved in this investigation, I would damn well tell you to go to hell with your theories about secret codes in fashion magazines. However --” He paused and pointed at Yoona. “We will do our best to bring in and question Mr. Diaz about it. If the past couple years have taught me anything, it's that where there is White Lightning, our friend, the Chairman, is lurking and laughing at us right under our noses. At this point I'm willing to put on this tin foil hat of yours, Im, if it means we can learn even the smallest jot of information about him."

Yoona leaned back in her chair. Well, that went better than expected. “Thank you, sir.”

* * *

_San Francisco, CA_

The arrival of the yellow padded envelopes had become one of Joohyun's few amusements in her packed schedule. She’d gotten enough of them to the point where she discreetly opened a PO Box at a post office in Daly City, just in case someone might notice that she was getting these envelopes. 

As District Attorney of the City and County of San Francisco, Joohyun was as busy as she'd ever been, perhaps more so; in any case, the constant buzz of activity was something that Joohyun found soothing. However, everyone made the mistake of thinking that she also found it fulfilling.

Quite the contrary. Joohyun was unwilling to be ground under the wheels of the San Francisco bureaucratic machine, which was exactly what the SFPD and certain influential figures in City Hall wanted. Ever since her press conference during her first month in office, she was acutely aware that they wanted her to get in line, or get gone. She was still very much an outsider, despite having worked in the DA’s office before her appointment, and they simply could not count on her to stay in line with the status quo.

Perhaps if her opponents had been more conciliatory towards her and more amenable to her vision for reforming city politics, she might have softened her resolve. Instead, they had decided to antagonize her, obviously in hopes of driving her out prematurely. Joohyun’s distinguished background as a lawyer afforded her some allies in the county’s Superior Court, but the same could not be said for others.The police chief refused meetings with her and many of his officers were barely cooperative. The same went for many department heads in City Hall, who didn't take kindly to Joohyun’s public criticism of their work (or lack thereof, as the case might be). The Board of Supervisors applauded what they called Joohyun’s “anti-corruption stance” but didn't seem interested in doing anything about it.  

Joohyun had expected them all to try her patience, but it was quite unpleasant and she was counting down the days until she could start weeding them out. The City Attorney was only the first of many takedowns. Drug usage aside, he was already unpopular due to his failure to bring a lawsuit against a developer who had bribed his way into a highly-coveted building contract with the city.

However, as Joohyun knew all too well, skill and determination would not have been enough to bring down an established figure like the former City Attorney, no matter how unpopular he already was. She would have needed extra help, and that was what she received.

* * *

It all started with the biggest case that Joohyun had prosecuted during her time at the Los Angeles DA’s office. Dr. Roger Anaya, a respected local doctor and Los Angeles City councilmember, was being charged with possession and distribution of prescription drugs and crystal methamphetamine, and laundering the profits through his sister’s smoke shop businesses. The indictment seemed to come out of the blue -- Dr. Anaya was well known for community projects aimed at improving their low-income neighborhoods he represented and for fiercely defending Hispanic-American immigrant interests. He was considering making runs for mayor, the State Assembly or the State Senate, and perhaps he might have made it to any of those offices, given his popularity. In fact, many of his constituents protested this arrest, strongly believing their beloved councilmember to be innocent. 

The network of evidence proved otherwise; the case against Dr. Anaya was tightly woven together with a series of cryptic hints and photographs mailed to the LAPD by an unknown informant, clues that conclusively linked Dr. Anaya to prescription drug rings run by the Sureños and the Mexican Mafia.

What the LAPD didn't know was that the unknown informant had already been sending correspondence to Joohyun after she had successfully prosecuted a group of Sureños for selling hydrocodone on the street during her first year in Los Angeles. The first letter from the unknown informant had come quite unexpectedly and simply read:

_Dear Ms. Seo. Congratulations on the successful conclusion. Your actions, although very small, have called my attention to certain things that I must take care of in your city. For this service, I shall repay you in installments. See attached for the first of these payments; the usage of these is up to your (excellent, as I believe) discretion._

_Best regards._

_A friend._

 The attachment was a cheap plastic thumb drive containing the tax records for a chain of smoke shops in Los Angeles County owned by Anaya’s sister. From then on, the letters had continued to come, carrying tantalizing hints in envelopes with various return addresses, mostly PO boxes in Fort Lauderdale, Brooklyn, and Chicago, although one of them was traced to an empty restaurant space in San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter. Intrigued, Joohyun had then enlisted an ally detective in LAPD’s Gang and Narcotics division to help her investigate the clues. The information that Joohyun received not only incriminated Dr. Anaya, but also a motley collection of notable citizens, including other doctors, high-ranking LAPD officers, and famous local musicians (mostly of the rapper persuasion), all affiliated in some way to the Sureños’ activities.

Joohyun was nothing if not thorough, and she had refused to tip her hand until a logical conclusion was reached and the snare was set for Dr. Anaya -- upon which her detective ally tipped off her bosses to an apartment in Jefferson Park, where the LAPD found plastic bins full of tightly-wrapped bundles of crystal meth and sealed bottles of Zohydro ER. Unlike Vicodin, which contained both hydrocodone and acetaminophen, Zohydro contained only hydrocodone. The FDA had received some flack for approving it for sale on the market, given the drug’s potential for abuse (as all opioids had). Upon questioning, the apartment’s landlord set the LAPD onto the scent of Dr. Anaya himself; bolstered by a cell phone recording passed on to Joohyun’s detective friend, the LAPD obtained a warrant for Anaya’s arrest.

Per Joohyun’s usual courtroom style, she ruthlessly prosecuted the Anaya case (so said the _Los Angeles Times_ ), which was not a surprise to anyone who had known her in law school. Joohyun made plenty of enemies while working that case, not only with local legal advocacy groups (who decried Joohyun as a legalistic vulture and sharply criticized her slash and burn tactics against her opponents), but also with the Sureño gangs whose business had been disrupted by the LAPD investigation and Joohyun’s relentless pursuit to strip the gangs of their livelihoods.

Once she had wrung the unknown informant’s clues for all they were worth, Joohyun destroyed their correspondence. The unknown informant then sent a letter not long after Dr. Anaya was found guilty on all charges:

_Dear Ms. Seo. Congratulations on another success. Are you interested in going further down this route? If so, please write back to this address. Be aware that your blood will soon bring a good price on the street; however, rest assured that I, at least, think that you are much more valuable alive and whole._

_Best regards,  
A friend._

Joohyun had replied with the following:

_To whom it may concern:_

_I am interested, if only to learn more about you._

_If that was an offer of protection in your most recent correspondence, then please rest assured that I am not so foolish as to turn it down. I remember very well that you initiated contact with me because you saw some use for me, and that you have been using me to carry out your own ends in this city. At the same time, you have proved quite useful to me. So far, our purposes have been similar enough that we both have been benefiting from this arrangement._

_Are you certain that you would like to continue our collaboration?_

_Sincerely,_  
_Joohyun C. Seo_

The underlying challenge in Joohyun’s acceptance letter seemed to amuse the recipient.

_Dear Ms. Seo. I would like to know more about you as well. I look forward to a fruitful collaboration with you._

_Best regards._  
_A friend._

Joohyun’s interest in her unknown informant went beyond just the useful hints and crumbs of evidence that were tossed her way. Her interest had been piqued by the obvious breadth of the informant’s knowledge. Clearly this person had power and influence in whatever circles he (or she) occupied, whether public or private. Never mind the dangers, or the legality, of associating with someone like that. Nothing seemed to be hidden from him (or her). What would it be like, to have all of that knowledge at one’s fingertips? What would it be like to be that formidable?

All of that was something that Joohyun knew that she wanted for herself.

* * *

The pattern of drug-related crimes that Joohyun prosecuted in Los Angeles soon began to take shape in her sharp mind. The Sureño gangs were fighting amongst each other as usual, over turf on which to sell their drugs, and that was when she began to hear more and more about White Lightning cocaine. 

Although she only prosecuted one case in which White Lightning was actually involved (in which she secured the conviction of the crooked LAPD detective, as she told Fritz later), Joohyun had learned everything that she could hold -- and her capacity for learning was enormous -- about the drug, its production and transportation. In her investigation, she came across stories about the mysterious Chairman, the White Lightning kingpin that had now become notorious in the news.

Joohyun surmised that the exposure, arrest and deposition of Dr. Anaya and his Sureño associates had benefited the Chairman. Therefore, the Sureños -- and by extension, the Mexican Mafia, who collected tribute from all of the Sureño gangs -- were the Chairman’s rivals in the Southern California drug trade. In support of her speculation, she discovered that the crooked LAPD detective had been skimming from a White Lightning stockpile that had been seized from the Maravilla gangs of East Los Angeles. The Maravilla gangs were among the few Hispanic gangs in Southern California who refused to pay tribute to the Mexican Mafia -- as such, they were marked as ‘always verde’. Anyone loyal to the Mexican Mafia was authorized to kill them on sight.

The crooked detective she had prosecuted, and the dealer who had helped him, had died of their stab wounds in prison. Joohyun preferred to err on the side of caution, so she assumed that this unfortunate incident had fit into the Chairman’s plans as well. If the Chairman had as tight of a grip on the White Lightning as some suspected, then that crooked detective and his fellow dealer must have been operating outside of the Chairman’s rules, and had been punished accordingly by the hands of the Chairman’s enemies.

By the time she made the move to San Francisco, Joohyun had long concluded that her mysterious informant was definitely working in the Chairman’s interests. It had become obvious to Joohyun that her informant was likely a powerful criminal -- or at least someone who was very morally ambiguous -- who only refrained from toying too much with Joohyun because Joohyun was being useful in prosecuting his (or her) enemies, and therefore they should be on opposite sides in the end.

At least, that would have been Joohyun’s line of thinking, if she actually pursued the law for the sake of justice.

Joohyun was not quite as idealistic as her dogged pursuit of corrupt government officials seemed to suggest. An overly idealistic mindset about justice set limits to her behavior -- limits that the ambitious Joohyun did not appreciate. Justice was blind, but Joohyun was not.

So this was why she ensured that their collaboration would continue, as Joohyun made her mark in Los Angeles and then moved north to San Francisco, where her shadowy ‘friend’ paved the way for her, ultimately leaking the incriminating video of the City Attorney in order to clear the field of her opponents for the DA’s office. Along the way, Joohyun began to receive death threats. Not that it deterred Joohyun in the least -- despite its dangers, she had always had a taste for power.

* * *

Joohyun bade Fritz a good evening as they parted ways at the front steps of the Hall of Justice; Joohyun headed southeast towards 7th Street, where she would cross over to the other side of the street and catch the the 27 bus that would take her home. 

The crosswalk light signaled for pedestrians to begin crossing the street, and just as Joohyun lifted her right foot off of the sidewalk and into the crosswalk, a car ran the red light and careened into the intersection, literally a hair’s breadth from her big toe.

Quick as a cat, Joohyun leapt back from the curb, knocking over a young woman who was standing just behind her. Angry shouts from fellow pedestrians followed as the car sped southeast on Bryant:

“Hey, that motherfucker almost ran someone over!”

“What an idiot, and right in front of the police too!”

A police car sitting nearby (there were always several police cars parked in front of the Hall of Justice) immediately peeled away from the curb and gave chase to the offender. Joohyun didn't care to believe too much in coincidences; she would have been much less successful if she did. Somewhere deep down, she knew that that driver had run the red light on purpose.

Joohyun could have laughed. A staged traffic accident -- especially in the view of the Hall of Justice -- was a very sloppy tactic. She wanted to believe that when the death threats materialized into actual attempts on her life, that they would come for her in the dark.

Shaking off the sudden surge of adrenaline and the concerned looks from witnesses, Joohyun turned to the woman who she had knocked over in her narrow escape from major (possibly mortal?) injury -- after all, that car had been going very fast.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, are you all right?”

The woman had all but sprung to her feet after their collision. “I’m all right, it was just a shove. But my phone isn't so lucky.” She looked down at the cracked screen of an iPhone 4 with a sour look on her face.

Joohyun immediately sized her up. An Asian, and judging from the facial features, a Korean, perhaps a year or two older than Joohyun -- if her makeup weren't hiding too much. Her hair was bleached blonde, with the dark roots were beginning to show. She was shorter than Joohyun, her speech laced with a gritty New York City accent, and she was wearing hot pink tights. “I’m very sorry about your phone, ma’am. Shall I pay for a repair, or a replacement?”

“You’d do that?” The woman squinted at her suspiciously.

A police officer approached them and Joohyun noticed the woman’s stiffening posture. Obviously this person was not entirely comfortable around police -- then again, few people were, especially in this day and age. “Ms. Seo, are you all right? Some bystanders saw and reported what happened at the crosswalk.”

“I’m quite all right…” Joohyun quickly glanced at the officer’s name tag and rank patch, “Sergeant Keller. I’m not hurt. I was merely on my way to catch the bus...I just had a slight surprise.”

“All right. We’re tracking the perp down and we’re confident that we’ll trace him.”

“You have my gratitude, Sergeant Keller.”

“Do you need any further assistance? If you’re still, uh, shaken up, one of the officers can give you a ride home.”

Joohyun wondered how obvious the attempt on her life had been to the bystanders. How embarrassing. “I appreciate the offer, Sergeant. Thank you.” She turned to the woman she had just met, who was still standing awkwardly nearby. Curious; Joohyun thought her new acquaintance might have slipped away already, since she obviously was not comfortable around police. “May I have your contact information? I’d like to pay to get your phone screen repaired, or for a new phone if that’s what you’d prefer.”

The woman shrugged. “I don’t want to, uh, impose...but if you’re going to insist -- Ms. Seo, is it? I’m in town doing a job for a co-worker’s friend over there,” she pointed to one of the numerous bail bonds offices lining the sidewalk across the street from the Hall of Justice. “The one to the left of that parking garage. Fireline Bail. Ask for Hyoyeon Kim. That’s me.”

* * *

Hyoyeon wasn’t easily intimidated, but there was something in Joohyun Seo’s eyes that made her pause. The District Attorney’s gaze was like flint, sharp and hard with the potential to throw out sparks, even when she was making nice and offering to buy Hyoyeon a new phone. Of course Hyoyeon knew that it was the DA who had bumped into her, especially after that police officer had called her ‘Ms. Seo.’ Her picture was all over the Internet, too. 

Normally, Hyoyeon didn’t like dealing with lawyer types, even though it was a small and unavoidable part of her job description. Lawyers were fucking bitches. Mixing it up with a lawyer had landed Hyoyeon in state prison, and she didn't mean the lawyers at her trial.

Yellow Envelope Person must have known that, and was doing this on purpose. The fucker.

Flexing her fists at the unpleasant memories, Hyoyeon sat and stared blankly at the telenovela playing on the flatscreen TV mounted on the wall in the front office of Fireline Bail Bonds. Occasionally, Hyoyeon’s gaze would stray to her co-worker’s friend, who was engaged in a conversation over the phone. ‘Eagle’ Wilson, owner of Fireline Bail Bonds, was Pinky’s high school friend and also Pinky’s cousin’s husband; he was currently looking for a bail jumper who was a known gang member charged with sexual battery and grand theft. Apparently Eagle had been looking for this fellow for a while. Given Hyoyeon’s success rate in catching bail jumpers, Pinky had recommended her to Eagle.

Hyoyeon hadn’t come north just because of Pinky’s reference; she was far too mercenary to help out Pinky’s friend out of goodwill. It was Yellow Envelope Person who had put down a deposit to convince Hyoyeon to go north, writing the following:

_Dear Ms. Kim. Your father will be cleared of all charges. I do not expect you to repay me for the actions that will lead to his release. However, his monetary debts remain unpaid. As a sign of my goodwill, I will be sending an undisclosed amount of money to your family so that they may begin erasing his debt. In return, I expect you to do some favors for me, favors for which I will pay you, if you need further convincing._

_Best regards._  
_A friend._

Hyoyeon had never gotten a straight answer from Yellow Envelope Person as to his or her identity. This was a fucking fine kettle of fish. Here she was, in California, being used by someone she didn’t know, grubbing for money so that her mom wouldn’t have to be saddled with the burden of paying for her dad’s selfishness.

Yellow Envelope Person kept promises, at least. Through Jay, Hyoyeon learned that her mom was receiving money to cover her dad’s stupidity and Mingu was receiving money for tuition. The benefactor, Jay reported, was a local nonprofit who specialized in assisting ‘deserving families’ with legal and financial trouble. Seeing this, Hyoyeon finally decided to show up and go north to San Francisco, as per Yellow Envelope Person’s request. Pinky got her the in with Eagle, she bought a one-way airplane ticket, and off she went.

A sellout, maybe, but what the fuck did she have left to sell? Cooling her heels in prison took away a lot of the idealistic shit she might have had about uprightness or dignity or whatever. She was further embittered by the fact that Mingu and her mom still wouldn’t call her directly even after Jay gave them her contact information.

She was supposed to understand that normal people didn’t always know how to deal to having convicted felons in the family, but it fucking hurt. If they didn’t seem to care, why should she care about selling out to some mysterious Yellow Envelope Person who apparently took a liking to her and wanted to play games and order her around? What was the point of it all, anyway? She was going to do this for her family, and once she paid enough to get her mom and Mingu out of trouble, then she was going to wash her hands of them entirely, if that was what they wanted to do to her.

* * *

Eagle was still on the phone when the glass entrance door swung open and District Attorney strolled into Fireline Bail Bonds as if she did it every other day. Hyoyeon stood up, while Eagle’s eyebrows climbed all the way up to his receding hairline. “Excuse me,” he said into the receiver and then covered it with his hand. “Can I help you, Ms., uh, District Attorney?" 

“Good afternoon, Mr. Wilson. It is Mr. Wilson, yes? Good. I’m here to speak with Hyoyeon Kim. No, it’s not a legal matter, we met on, ah, personal business. I’ll try not to take too much of her time, if you require her to be available.”

“I don’t think I do...all right then. You’ll come back when you’re done, Kim?”

Hyoyeon nodded. “Yeah, you can get back to your phone call. Won’t take too long, I swear. Ms. Seo, uh, can we step outside for a sec?”

Once they were outside, Joohyun asked, “Have you had lunch, Hyoyeon?” 

“Uh...” Maybe the District Attorney was just being ridiculously polite, but did she think that she was Hyoyeon’s mom or something? “No, I’m good. Listen, there’s a reason why I made it so that you’d have to come find me again. Can we walk while we’re talking?” She lowered her voice. “I don’t want us to be a sitting duck like you almost were the other day for that car.”

At that, the District Attorney’s face froze into a frown so steely that it looked almost robotic. Like the Terminator.

It was a cool and overcast day in San Francisco (which was quite common spring weather for the city), so if Hyoyeon shivered, it was probably from the outside temperature and not from the District Attorney’s expression. No wonder she won all of her damn cases.

They ended up walking to Draves Park, which was behind the Hall of Justice and on the other side of the I-80 overpass. A few younger children -- too young yet to start kindergarten -- were running about on the playground, which would afford some neutralization of any threat, assuming that the threat wasn’t into harming children. “Did they catch the dude who tried to run you over?”

“Yes. Gang initiate. Obviously not a professional. Whoever hired him didn’t have a lot of cash to spare.”

“Oh.” Hyoyeon glanced to her left and to her right, and then said, “I had to tell you this, Ms. Seo. You didn’t cause my phone screen to crack when you knocked me over. The crack’s been there for a month.”

The District Attorney narrowed her eyes. “Is that so?”

“Yeah. I was in Los Angeles for a bit before I came here, I've only been here for a couple weeks. There’s this job I’m doing...for a friend. A friend who told me to look for you.”

“A friend?”

“Yeah. _A friend_.”

At first Ms. Seo looked kind of confused, but then she must have realized what Hyoyeon was getting at, because suddenly her iron gaze bore into Hyoyeon’s like figurative thumbscrews.

“Very well.”


	3. make the bad guys good for a weekend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait.

_San Jose, CA_

Yoona entered the interrogation room and sat across from Norman Diaz, who was slouched in a way that was glaringly reminiscent of his daughter. Hurst had pulled some strings, yelled at some people, made some veiled threats, whatever -- and after a few days Yoona had been given the go-ahead to question the suspect.

Tucked under Yoona’s arm was the Elle magazine that had sparked this new leg of the investigation. This time, she wasn’t alone; Agent Simon slipped in behind her and closed the door. Nobody said anything as Yoona and her colleague took a seat across the table from Diaz, who looked at them apprehensively. There was nothing of the hardened criminal in this man -- Yoona wondered if he even had the stomach to use, much less touch, the drugs and weapons that they had seized from his house. And yet here they were.

Unlike with Cristina, the FBI had no intention of going soft on her father, as he was the main suspect. Agent Simon began the questioning, folding his arms and leaning forward, elbows on the table. “Norman Diaz, we’re here to ask some questions that came up when we were examining the evidence. All right?”

Diaz nodded. “Yeah,” he said.

Yoona unceremoniously dropped the Elle magazine on the table and slid the scrap of paper with the four-digit number across the table. “Do these look familiar?”

Lifting his head, Diaz stared at the piece of paper and the magazine. His eyes widened, and then narrowed, as if in deep concentration. He was quiet, long enough for Yoona to start getting a little excited. Diaz had to know something, he was too quiet for too long.

Finally, Diaz spoke. “I...don’t think so.”

Yoona immediately scowled. The man was yanking her chain. Had to be. “You’re lying. See, you bought this magazine for your daughter. She didn’t want it. Never touched it. And yet it was the one thing that stood out in your house. Know why? Because every single thing in the house was clean and neat except for those magazines in her room.”

Diaz shifted in his chair. “I mean, I never seen that piece of paper before,” he replied. “I bought the magazines for my daughter, yeah, of course I know about them.”

“Don’t get smart with us, Norman,” Agent Simon cut in. “We know those magazines mean something. We know that piece of paper means something. And whatever you say to us, we will know if you’re lying or not. And right now, you’re lying if you say you don’t know.”

Yoona glanced quickly at her colleague. Agent Simon had a habit of pulling these kind of bluffs, even though they didn’t always work out. Hurst didn’t always appreciate this, just like he didn’t care for Yoona’s tendency to make up wild theories out of a mere cobweb and spin it into a net that could possibly trip her up instead of catching anything of use.

“If you already know, then what do you want to know from me?” Diaz challenged. Interesting development -- he was showing some fight, despite the downtrodden attitude that he had showed when Yoona and her colleague had first walked into the interrogation room.

At that response, Yoona decided that it was better to play along with Agent Simon’s bluff. “You already know what we want to know, Norman. Look, you were dealing White Lightning coke. We’ve been all over this from the start, and we only have one thing on our mind when we find out someone’s been transporting or selling that stuff. One thing.”

“I know what you mean,” Diaz said, “but I seriously can’t help you there. You want to know who _El Presidente_ \-- the Chairman -- is? Nobody knows who El Presidente is, not even me.”

“So you’ve heard of him, then?”

“Who hasn’t heard of that guy? Everybody knows he exists, I hear people talk, you know? But we don’t know who he is. I don’t know who he is, I’m telling you.”

“Well, he’d be some kind of idiot if you did know who he was, right? Because then we could probably extract that information from you,” Agent Simon retorted. “From the looks of it, someone gave you a key to a cipher or something, so that you could tap into the Chairman’s network, and yet you go and get caught so easily.”

Yoona frowned. Sure, it could be quite true that Diaz was just that incompetent -- it wouldn’t be the first time Yoona had seen a good share of people were calculating enough to pull off the worst crimes but then were also stupid enough to get caught literally minutes later -- but something was off. What the hell was Agent Simon getting at? Was he implying that…

“Tell me, Norman,” Yoona said, abruptly getting up from her chair and pacing the room, trying to regather the threads that were suddenly sprouting from her mind, “So you’re moving White Lightning cocaine, and because of that, the SJPD are working to connect you to the gangs in East LA. And yet they’re probably barking up the wrong tree because the East LA gangs are working for the Chairman -- but you aren’t! You’re not working for him at all!”

Diaz leaned back in his metal folding chair, his pupils blown wide; his skin tone was dark enough so that Yoona could not tell for certain if he was flushing or paling. Then again, she didn’t really need to, because she noticed that he had begun to sweat. Had she hit a nerve? Emboldened, Yoona continued, “If you’re not working for him, that means you are moving the Chairman’s prize product without his authority. History has taught us that he doesn’t like it when that happens; he makes these really bloody messes over it and gets national headlines, you know? Now he’s got more than a few enemies who want in on his corner of the market and don’t like it when he doesn’t let them and when he steals their customers. And, let’s say, some of them got to you, paid you some money that you really needed for a job they wanted done, and gave you something that could be used against him, just in case the Chairman came calling. Isn’t that right, Norman?”

By now Diaz was breathing quickly and heavily; Agent Simon’s mouth curled upward in a smirk. Yoona snuck another quick look at her colleague and he mouthed the words, “ _Get him_.”

“I think the Chairman already came calling,” Yoona continued, turning back to face Diaz. “Because, before you could move the drugs any farther, you were caught. Rather conveniently for him. The police have got a good case against you, so you’re going to get jail time for sure. And you should know that he’s got guys on the inside, in every prison in this state. You’re not one of his, so the Chairman will make sure you get what he thinks you deserve. And who says he’s gonna stop there? What if he comes for Cristina? You can hope that the people who got you into this will protect you, but I wouldn’t bet on them doing anything for your little girl.”

“I know you won’t do anything for her,” Diaz uttered, in a thin, choked voice. He looked completely flabbergasted. “I wouldn’t trust you.”

“If you say so. Now if the reverse is true -- that you’re actually working for the Chairman but you’re just pretending not to -- then you’re just a ruse to lead his rivals and law enforcement off his scent. Wouldn’t be the first time he’s done that,” Yoona said, modulating her tone to sound almost conversational. Agent Simon let out a bark of dry laughter. “Whichever one is true -- it doesn’t matter. The real point is that whoever it was didn’t give those hidden clues to you for no reason, and you didn’t place them in your house the way you did for no reason. You wanted someone to find the magazines and ultimately find that piece of paper,” Yoona pointed at the scrap of paper still lying on the table between them. “Maybe I’m giving myself too much credit, but they wouldn’t have stood out to just anyone. Which means you didn’t want just anyone to notice them, you wanted someone in particular to find them. The question is, Norman, who gave you the directions and who did you want to find the clues?”

Diaz shook his head vigorously, but by now he really was sweating profusely.

Agent Simon scoffed. “Not talking? But why not? You’ve got what you wanted. We’ve bitten the bait. Or are you changing your mind about all this? Too late.”  

“I told you, I don’t fucking know! I don’t even know what the numbers on the paper mean!” Diaz groaned. “If there was a message, and if there was a fucking key, they didn’t tell me what was it for, or even that I’d be able to figure it out.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“I don’t know, okay? How many times I gotta tell you? The big people, they hide all the time, they didn’t want me to know who they are, either. They did their thing through the guy who showed me into the business.”

“And that was -- who?”

“A guy I did high school with, his name’s Jude Pacheco. I trusted him, because Jude and I go way back. I got laid off and I couldn’t find a job for so long, okay? Times are hard for people right now. So I got to asking him, ‘cause I never saw him doing anything but he was driving these real fancy cars, BMWs and that kind. I asked him who he was doing business with, he said he didn’t know either, he was too far down the chain to know where the money was coming from, you know. To be fair, he warned me. He was honest with me, told me straight up that I was getting into the drug scene. He was the one who told me about this guy, El Presidente, Chairman or whatever, and everything I know about him I heard from Jude. It wasn’t much, you know? Long story short, I got in with these guys to move the coke and shit, but Jude was my go-between. He was the one who sent me my money. I never saw guys higher up than him, I swear, it wasn’t until I was several hundred thousand in deep that I heard that we were going to run White Lightning coke, you know? By this time I was high on the money, I was making so much of it. But at the beginning I only wanted to help my daughter even though I couldn’t live with them anymore. And there’s my ma in Bakersfield. I gotta take care of her too.”

Yoona finally resumed her seat. “What happened to Jude?”

“Last I heard he ran off to Texas. He was arrested for beating his girl, got out on bail and lit out for El Paso. Don’t know what happened to him, and I don’t actually give a shit because I don’t cover for guys who hit women. Anyway, I got a new contact but he wasn’t so friendly. He was the one who gave me the order about the magazines.”

“We’ll look Mr. Pacheco up,” Agent Simon said. “Now, based on what you just told us...are we correct in saying that what we have here is that someone gave you the order to buy the magazines, your go-between gave you the key to the clue, so to speak, and you planted it in your house in such a way, on purpose, so that we would find it right away? Someone like, I don’t know, the FBI, for instance?” he concluded sardonically.

Diaz looked down and away. “If you guys think you’re right, then you should just solve the clue by yourself, because I got nothing else to say to you, I told you and the cops everything I know about my involvement.”

“Your face tells us we’re right,” Yoona retorted calmly, even though she still wasn’t completely sure. Either way, she had no choice but to pursue it as far as it would take her.

* * *

Diaz was taken away again, leaving Yoona and Agent Simon a little more than what they began with -- except they didn’t really know where to start with the cipher, now that they knew it was quite likely to be one. “Know any codebreakers?” Yoona asked as they holed themselves up in an empty conference room, with only break room coffee to ease Yoona’s oncoming headache.

“Yeah, a couple. We’ll get them on it,” Agent Simon said. “The question now is, where’s the code?”

“We’d have to look through all of the magazines. And if we don’t find it? I’m thinking he planted them, he never really outright denied it -- but who told him to do that? Unless something else comes up, the only way to find out is to find the code and decipher it.” Yoona sunk her head in her hands. “Did I do right? Suddenly I feel like I just wasted my time.”

“We got something out of him, though.”

“Yeah, all we got was a sudden brick wall. Norman’ll get put away in jail, maybe someone on the Chairman’s side will slit his throat in the shower, and we still won’t be much closer to choking off the flow. This war will never end.”

Agent Simon frowned. “Hey, why the sudden pessimism? You were doing fine in there, talking big and making him uncomfortable enough to spill what he did. We’ll just have to do what we gotta do in order to make sense of the cipher. We’ll probably have to pull long hours dredging in evidence, but that’s part of the job.”

“How glamorous.”

“Hey, we can’t all look as good as you.”

Yoona only scowled at the good-natured crack.

* * *

_San Francisco, CA_

The car that had come very close to injuring (perhaps killing) Joohyun in front of the Hall of Justice turned out to be a stolen vehicle; the original owner of the car lived in San Rafael, and he had reported it stolen about a month ago. Not that he would be able to get it back, though; it was being held as evidence against the would-be assailant. “I would even go so far as to say ‘murderer’ because I really don’t think he was trying to give me a mere love-tap,” Joohyun later told Hyoyeon.

Despite the SFPD’s widespread ambivalence (and in the case of the police chief and his closest associates, a badly-concealed animosity) towards Joohyun, the investigation was fortunately led by the younger, more idealistic officers who were quietly impressed with their new DA’s energetic attitude towards her work. Thanks to these officers, she was getting almost real-time updates on the investigation into the driver, who was obviously not very forthcoming on who had hired him. Fritz handled the attempted assault conviction with admirable efficiency, and the driver was locked away, to much approval from the residents of San Francisco. Joohyun had made sure to ally with the officers who had handled her case, much as she had done with the LAPD detective who had helped her bring down Dr. Anaya and his network of gang associates.

The car incident had also brought a turning point in her communication with her mysterious informant. Four days after nearly getting run over, Joohyun had received a package containing a brand-new encrypted Blackphone and a short note stating that her informant now felt the need to "streamline" their correspondence by closing the PO boxes, and provided the new phone as an alternative.

" _If you need to contact me_ ," the note said, " _then call the saved number on your new phone_ ," whereupon Joohyun destroyed the rest of their written communication, to make sure that all trace of their letters were gone, but did not close her PO box in Daly City.

Joohyun had not yet attempted to make any calls on the Blackphone since receiving it -- she was a busy woman and besides, she preferred that her informant make the first move as often as possible -- but either way her "friend" apparently knew about the car and Joohyun's brush with death (or at least severe injury), making a passing reference to it in the note that came with the phone. The local news had reported on it the day after it had happened, and anyone who bothered to keep up with news in San Francisco would have heard of the incident. Clearly, San Francisco was on her informant’s radar.

Perhaps her “friend” felt that the time for a closer association was near; there was no other reason why her mysterious informant had decided to send Hyoyeon to her. Assuming that Joohyun was correct about the informant working hand-in-hand with the notorious Chairman, the string of drug raids that had been happening in San Jose would have captured the mysterious informant’s attention.

And if one applied Occam’s razor to the point of breakage, then this mutual friend of theirs could quite possibly be the Chairman himself.

* * *

Hyoyeon did not live in the city proper, as it was too expensive -- a common complaint throughout the Bay Area. Instead, Hyoyeon had rented a room in a duplex across the San Francisco Bay, in El Cerrito. She had discreetly shared her address with Joohyun via a text message with an offer to discuss their situation a bit more thoroughly. If Hyoyeon had received a Blackphone too, however, she didn't mention it. From all of Joohyun's observations, it appeared that Hyoyeon continued to use the iPhone 4 with the cracked screen that had brought them together in partnership with the speeding car.

While Joohyun agreed to meet with Hyoyeon more often, because she needed to plot out her next move in regards to this partnership with her informant, work prevented Joohyun from clearing her schedule until the first weekend in May. She and Hyoyeon had met up a few times during the month of April, and by now Joohyun was already fully aware that Hyoyeon Kim was her polar opposite. Hyoyeon was a convicted felon (Joohyun had done a background check on her, of course); she was impulsive, foul-mouthed, all adrift in a sea of uncertainty. Hyoyeon’s reasons for working with their mutual ‘friend’ were completely mercenary -- Hyoyeon had told Joohyun several times that she was only doing this for the money. On the other hand, the older woman was active, agile, bold, and much more perceptive than the bleached hair and constant expletives made her seem.

Saturday morning -- the first Saturday in May -- found the District Attorney walking briskly to Market Street, hands ensconced in the pockets of her high school track jacket. By all appearances, her gait was purposeful yet casual, no more or less suspicious than anyone else walking on the streets of San Francisco. In reality, Joohyun’s gaze was flickering constantly from side to side and her ears were listening for even the slightest out-of-place noise. The attempt to harm Joohyun with a stolen car had made her more alert than ever, which resulted in a longer-than-usual deliberation over whether it would be safer for her to drive or to take public transit across the bay to El Cerrito. In the end, she decided that it was not worth potential damage to her beloved (and relatively new) Optima. If she took public transit, she would at least have witnesses if she were attacked. Joohyun thought it was likely -- though not certain -- that her informant was involved somehow in the car incident.

She would have to take the responsibility of protecting herself -- a mantra that she had now embraced in earnest. How could she be all that she must be, if she couldn’t even do that? How could she gain and keep what was hers if she could not protect herself?

Joohyun breathed deeply, savoring the cool, misty morning air that blanketed the city almost every morning. Her city, and she would make sure it stayed that way for as long as she wished it to be. The consequences -- well, they would be dealt with as they came and in her usual way, with aplomb and ruthlessness.

* * *

It didn’t take long. A few seconds was all Joohyun had between noticing a duo of large young men wearing 49ers-branded clothing as she descended the stairs into the Powell Street Station, and then being chased hotly by the duo. She thought she might recognize them, if she had time to think about it, but she didn’t have that time. All she had were those few seconds to turn on her heel and run as fast as she could.

True, seconds were all she really needed, since her stint in high school track definitely came in handy. However, it was hard to lose them because the station had not yet filled up with the usual weekend shoppers when Joohyun arrived. However, Joohyun -- ever careful -- had timed her walk to coincide with the next train headed to the East Bay; a quick wave of her transit pass opened the fare gate and she bolted through it, rather like a racehorse. She briefly amused herself with the comparison, considering that the Kentucky Derby was taking place today. She was familiar with the first Saturday in May, as one of her cousins had a weakness for betting on horse races, and always talked about it during family gatherings.

Her pursuers hurdled past the gates after her -- Joohyun heard the station agent on the overhead speakers, shouting for the transit police to catch the fare evaders.

Joohyun shifted into high gear and practically leaped down the stairs -- only avoiding a nasty fall on her face, thanks to the impeccable balance that she had carefully cultivated through years of ballet and taekwondo in her youth. The Richmond train was already at the platform and she slipped through the doors, squeezing past a scruffy fellow with a bike and powerful body odor.

He scowled at her, but Joohyun pointedly ignored him, face set in her best prosecutor poker face as she watched the duo trampling down the stairs after her. Too late, though -- the doors slid closed, and she allowed herself a dark smile as they threw themselves at the train, only to be dragged back by two burly police officers just as the train pulled out of the station.

Two down, but however many more to go? These two appeared to have been unarmed, but she could not say the same for any future attackers. More importantly, she was not going to lead these thugs across the Bay if she could help it -- not only out of concern for public safety, but also because Joohyun knew that she had much more influence within San Francisco city limits. She didn’t know if she could trust law enforcement on the other side of the Bay, not to mention that there was no reason to complicate things by bringing Hyoyeon into this.   

Joohyun shook her head and sighed at the prospect of an eventful morning.

* * *

Hyoyeon bounced impatiently on the balls of her feet. She was waiting for Joohyun at the train station, and Joohyun was running late. Joohyun had sent a text -- _Stay put. I will be late_. Frankly, that was the only reason Hyoyeon was still waiting. She had ended up sitting outside of the station at one of the bus stops, but then she had become more and more restless as time crawled by and now she was on her feet, pacing around outside of the station as the trains screeched and rumbled overhead.

Then Hyoyeon received one more text from Joohyun: _Never mind. Unable to join you until later today, if at all. Amuse yourself._

Frowning, Hyoyeon texted back: _where r u_

There was no reply.

Hyoyeon, though she would never admit it even under extreme torture (she dated Jay and had been in jail for years -- how much worse could it be?), was worried enough about this damn lawyer bitch to go into the station and jump on the next train bound for San Francisco.

It was just about an hour until lunchtime and usually Hyoyeon would have been starving -- she hadn’t eaten anything because fucking Joohyun made her wait -- but anxiety kept her from feeling any of it. In her opinion, she had a fucking right to be worried. After all, she had first met Joohyun after what was basically a blatant assassination attempt, and she had no fucking idea what was going on, as Joohyun did not answer any of Hyoyeon’s texts.

Despite not knowing where Joohyun could be, Hyoyeon stayed on the train and rode into San Francisco. She got off at her usual stop near Civic Center Plaza, and sent another text:

_Im in the city. tell me where u r or ill tell on u to the cops_

Actually, that was an empty threat and Hyoyeon knew it. Despite being a bounty hunter and having to deal with cops on a regular basis, Hyoyeon was still very much allergic to them in the way only an ex-con could be.

Somehow, that text finally provoked Joohyun to reply. Maybe it was magic lawyer voodoo.

_Central police station. North Beach. Meet me there if you are so inclined._

The wave of relief at Joohyun’s reply was quickly swept away by irritation. North Beach? The fuck? If Joohyun had only replied sooner, Hyoyeon would have gotten off the train earlier at Montgomery and she wouldn’t have had to retrace her steps.

_wtf. stay put im coming to give u a piece of my fuckin mind_

_Then you should be grateful  for bureaucracy. I’ll be here for a while yet._

Despite her athleticism, Hyoyeon’s feet were sore when she finally arrived at the Central police station. Thankfully, she didn’t have to go in and face all those cops -- Joohyun, with her magic lawyer voodoo, came out to meet her when Hyoyeon arrived.

“Joohyun!” Hyoyeon hissed as Joohyun exited the police station, as calm as could be, looking only the tiniest bit disheveled but with heightened color in her baby-fat cheeks. Clearly, something had happened and it had to do with her. “What the fuck was that?”

“Not now. We’re leaving,” Joohyun said in that snooty way that Hyoyeon had gradually come to associate with her ever since they met. Perched on Joohyun’s head was a...was that a flat bill snapback? Not only that, it was a Philadelphia Phillies cap. Seriously? Those dipshit Phillies? Hyoyeon knew that Joohyun didn’t like baseball -- there was this one interview Joohyun did where she made a passing remark about hating baseball more than anyone else did, and that even got her on SportsCenter. Must have been a really slow day on ESPN. Anyway, she had fucking terrible taste in baseball team gear.

“Where are you going?” Hyoyeon spluttered. “And what the fuck is with the hat?”

Joohyun glared at Hyoyeon from under the bill of her stupid cap. Even the lawyer’s glares were snooty, and this one was bordering on total bitch. “Anywhere we will not be disturbed. Outside of the city, preferably.” She adjusted the cap on her head. “At least I have this little triumph.”

“The fuck does that mean? What did you do now?”

“Do not test me, Hyoyeon. I have had a rough morning, I am not in the mood to talk about the incompetent excuse of law enforcement that is the SFPD, and I am hungry.”

* * *

Hungry enough for a hamburger, apparently. Joohyun had basically dragged Hyoyeon back on the train towards the East Bay (“Seriously? The fuck? I already spent all that time to get to SF and now we’re going back?”). Joohyun was on high alert the whole time, and Hyoyeon started to get an inkling that Joohyun had maybe been attacked or gotten into a fight that morning, something serious enough to involve the police station.

It was well into mid-afternoon when they reached their destination, which was a tiny burger joint in Albany -- not quite a shack, it was too big for that -- but still tiny. It was just past the lunch hour, but still moderately full of people as they walked up to the entrance. The place was half-full with people eating late lunches. Hyoyeon’s stomach growled loudly at the scent of grilled beef, onions and deep-fried anything, reminding her that she was supposed to be starving at this hour. Fuck, it all smelled so damn good, she almost forgave Joohyun for not giving a shit about Hyoyeon coming to find her in San Francisco. Maybe Joohyun’s taste in baseball teams sucked ass, but her dining choices seemed promising, even though Joohyun seemed like a health food nut kind of person.

Joohyun stepped up to the counter, her polite lawyer face back on, and greeted the lady behind the counter in Korean. “Ah, Joohyun-ssi!” the lady exclaimed warmly. “It’s been a long time!”

Oh. The proprietors were Korean. Hyoyeon’s Korean was rusty as hell -- there weren’t many Korean speakers in prison with her, honestly -- but at least she understood what they were saying. Joohyun and the ahjumma at the counter exchanged pleasantries as Hyoyeon stood awkwardly in the background.

At last, Joohyun’s lawyer ass finally shut up and they got to place their orders, the lady smiling at them all the while and cracking ahjumma jokes that Hyoyeon tried to smile at (but she was sure it looked more like she was grimacing). Joohyun obtained two seats for them at the window facing out onto the street. “I want to keep an eye on what’s out there,” she murmured.

Hyoyeon frowned. “We’d be sitting ducks if there’s a, you know, drive-by. Windows.” She pointed her fingers. “Pow, pow, you know?”

“Not if we’re hiding in plain sight. And there’s an exit door behind you.”

“Oh, so you’re in disguise, huh? I fucking hate the Phillies, by the way.” They were speaking in low tones, glancing every so often out of the window.

“You are quite the basket full of prejudices, aren’t you?”

Hyoyeon spread her hands out and shrugged. “Hey, it’s not my fault. I’m a born Mets fan.”

“I really don’t care. National pastime, more like national waste of time.”

Hyoyeon rolled her eyes, slurping her Dr. Pepper. It would be better if she had some Jack Daniels to go with it. “Yeah, I saw that interview where you threw that shade against the Giants. It was all over SportsCenter for like, a day.”

At that moment, the proprietor ahjumma emerged to deliver their food. Hyoyeon suspended her questioning in favor of digging into her cheeseburger. “Damn. This shit is amazing. Oh my God. This is great.” She angled a pointed look at Joohyun’s hamburger. “This is, you know, a bit surprising. I kinda had you pegged as a health nut.”

Joohyun nodded knowingly. “I discovered this place completely by accident. When I had just started at the DA’s office in San Francisco, one of the assistant DAs recommended this place to me. And, no, I am not quite the health food stickler that I was in law school. However, it is a useful trick. Not many people would expect me to be in a place like this, eating greasy food and wearing apparel from a sport I hate. A thin layer of protection, certainly, but protection nonetheless, for now. Also, the proprietor and her workers here are quite trustworthy.” She looked pointedly at Hyoyeon’s cup. “Soda is still bad for you, by the way.”

“Don’t go bitching on my Dr. Pepper, Joohyun. Seriously, though -- what happened? I’m guessing some assholes chased you.” Hyoyeon’s eyes narrowed. “And where’d you get that hat?”

Joohyun smirked a generic knowing lawyer smirk, and lowered her voice to the point that she was practically whispering. "Rest assured, Hyoyeon unnie. Self-defense is still legal. ”

Hyoyeon arched an eyebrow. “Unnie? Did you just ‘unnie’ me?”

“Well, you are older than me. Do you prefer Hyoyeon-ssi?”

“God, no honorifics, please, it reminds me of how much my Korean actually sucks.” Hyoyeon frowned down at the remains of her hamburger. “So...like...what, did some guys try to kill you, like that shithead with the car, I guess? Should I be worried about people coming after me?”

“Well, if they ever catch on about your association with me, they will come after you, as they clearly haven’t given up on me. I led them on a wild goose chase throughout the Embarcadero train station first, and then through the Financial District and Chinatown. Now, if some of them fell onto train tracks, or tripped over parked bicycles, or got knocked into sidewalk stalls -- well, that was a natural consequence of chasing me, and completely their own fault. We did put on a show for the tourists -- they were lucky that my pursuers are poor shots, and that I am still proficient in taekwondo.”

“Wait, wait. They had guns?”  

“Yes.”

Joohyun looked so damn satisfied with herself. Hyoyeon snorted. “We got a badass over here. Can’t wait to hear about it on the news.”

“Some responsible citizens had contacted the police for me and they came right as I was tackling my last pursuer into the crowd of tourists waiting to buy egg tarts on Grant, and good thing that I did, because he had one bullet left to use on me. I was taken to the police station and I made everything as clear as I could to them, and even though the Chief  has made it clear that he doesn’t like me, I am still the DA. And I know who is trying to kill me,” Joohyun said calmly.

Hyoyeon frowned. “For real?”

Joohyun nodded. “My pursuers this morning were members of a local Bloods-affiliated gang. I borrowed this hat from one of them when I was in the Embarcadero station.” She pointed to her snapback. “And can you believe it, the police didn’t even seem to notice that it wasn’t mine. They let me walk off with it.”

Now Hyoyeon knew Bloods. For fuck’s sake, she’d chased plenty of them as a bounty hunter down in LA. Some of the girls who she’d been locked up with in jail had Blood boyfriends. Fucking gangs. “The Phillies still suck. About the Bloods, though. This matters because…?”

“You know their biggest rivals are the Crips, and the Crips are affiliated with Nuestra Familia, who are the primary prison rivals to the Mexican Mafia in California. As you probably know, La Eme considers me a threat, since my tenure as a prosecutor in Los Angeles."

“No, no, I don’t know that at all,” Hyoyeon said sarcastically. “Fuck, I chase criminals for a living. I did it down in LA. I at least know the fucking basics about gangs. So you’re saying that the people chasing after you are people who have a good reason to try to shut you down. So what?”

“I spared some time to think about this as I was being chased throughout the transit system. It’s not just about me disrupting their business and putting them away, it’s also the fact that the Mexican Mafia and their allies are currently waging an ongoing war against the person or persons who are overtaking their turf and profiting from it. Now, the lucrative trade of White Lightning cocaine in California has been linked to this unrest. They are also targeting me, not only because I do not tolerate their activities, but also because I have been linked to whoever has brought you and me together.”

Hyoyeon’s eyes widened, but then she nodded grimly. “I get what you’re saying. You think our...uh...friend is all up in drugs and gangs.”

It wasn’t that much of a surprise. Anyone with that much money to throw around and pay her dad’s way out of fraud charges -- well, they were bound to be shady. Definitely shady. Drug money -- she should’ve known. So many of the bail jumpers she chased faced drug charges. There was too much money to be made there to stop them from going in, and too much to lose for them to get out again.

“I don’t just think, I know. I know that our ‘friend’ has everything to do with that drug in particular.”

“You mean...the White Lightning coke? How?”

Joohyun smiled, the know-it-all smile of a prosecutor on the brink of a conviction. “The people who were chasing me, they told me so -- to my face. Tell me, Hyoyeon,” Joohyun said, leaning back in her chair and idly sipping at her free cup of water, “since you know about White Lightning cocaine, you’ve heard of an individual called the Chairman, haven’t you?”

“Chairman? Like...the Chairman with a big C? The drug kingpin?”

“Yes. The Chairman got me -- and you by extension -- into this situation, so I fully intend to have the Chairman get us out of it. I have an idea of what our friend is capable of, and I can’t find it in myself to be too worried.”

Hyoyeon’s jaw dropped slightly in realization. “Whaaat. You’re seriously saying that our friend is the fucking Chairman,” she hissed in a low voice. They were still in public, after all.

Joohyun shrugged. “The more I think about it, the more obvious it is. It seemed like a longshot at first, but these attacks on me have started to move me in that direction.”

“But -- but -- it’s like -- isn’t it still a longshot? Do you really have that much proof?”

“I am not going to lie to you -- I don’t really have conclusive proof. But I find that I am rarely wrong. I have made it my business to be right.”

Hyoyeon scoffed. “Well, aren’t you fucking calm! And even if you’re right, if you’re going to ask him to bail you out or whatever the fuck, he’s going to ask for some shit in return! Like that’s the whole reason why I’m here, he told me to find you! He paid me money! I mean, I’m a jailbird. Nobody would really be surprised about me doing this shit, getting involved. But you? You’re a lawyer! You’re supposed to be...like...lawful and shit.”

“Even those on the right side of the law have their own agendas.”

“So what the fuck happens now?”

“I think they will lay low for a bit after this latest defeat, but soon they will try again, and try harder. It doesn’t seem like they are trying too hard now, but the more I humiliate them the more they will come after me. And I do not like constantly looking over my shoulder. It is excessively stressful. Excessive stress is unhealthy. I must be invulnerable, until no one dares to challenge me.”

“And how are you gonna to do that?”

Joohyun looked at her, smiling that snooty lawyer smile again. “I will go directly to the Chairman and ask for advice.”

* * *

_Louisville, KY_

Jessica received a text alert about a public disturbance in downtown San Francisco on her phone when she and Krystal were on the other side of the country; they were at Churchill Downs for the Kentucky Derby. This alert in particular came from an automatic text from her Blackphone, which ran a mobile app designed to listen in on police scanners and transcribe their contents. The alerts keep her abreast of events happening in the San Francisco area, most importantly a series of drug busts in San Jose, as well as the curious case of the attempt to kill off San Francisco’s new district attorney.

A former employee of mobile app development firm Babblace, owned by Synthyris subsidiary Myslite Technologies, had built the app for Jessica in utmost secrecy. That employee was paid a fortune for his work and he now lived in extravagant exile on the French Riviera, monitored by the Chairman’s extensive network of Yenish spies in France.

Before she had gotten the text alert, Jessica had been mingling with old schoolmates from Exeter. One of them had booked a Finish Line Suite, and Jessica had been invited by her former classmate to join her group. The suite’s amenities included a fully-stocked bar, and even provided a bottle of Antinori Toscana red on request -- not her favorite Solaia, but it would have to do.

Jessica excused herself from the conversation to check the text alert. It informed her of a disturbance on the San Francisco transit system, and then an ongoing development through tourist-riddled Chinatown. Intriguing. She would have to delve deeper into this.

It was a warm spring day in Louisville and it would only get warmer. She took a slow sip of her wine, reached up and adjusted the John Boyd hat that Krystal had bought for her -- after much research and frustration on Krystal’s part, because millinery was not one of her younger sister’s interests. The hat was a success, judging from the compliments that Jessica was getting from her former schoolmates.

At the moment, Krystal was down in one of the new Winner’s Circle suites, which were reserved for the owners of horses running in the Derby. The Jungs currently owned a horse racing stable, Snow Sparrow Farm, and had a horse entered in the race. The three year old colt, Echolocation, was Snow Sparrow Farm’s first entry into the Derby in ten years. Jessica had purchased the struggling farm after it had been put up for sale two years ago, “simply because she could,” as Krystal bluntly put it, retaining the services of the previous owner’s trainer and staff. Echolocation was not a favorite to win the race, but that didn’t matter much. For Jessica, the Derby was more about networking -- to see and be seen.

Krystal had been grouchy all day, and no wonder -- the source of Krystal’s grouchiness showed up in immaculate Oscar de la Renta, just as Jessica went off in search of her sister.

“Hello, Jess.”

“Oh. Hi, Tyler. I had no idea you were planning to be here. Oh, hey -- sorry, no hugs, don’t want to spill my drink, do we? You know reds don’t come out easily...”

* * *

Tyler Kwon had been Jessica’s financial advisor for a long time; he’d been around when she had founded Synthyris Holdings, and had continued to drop in on her regularly. He was a graduate of Harvard Business School and had worked at Morgan Stanley until recently; now he had his own private equity firm, which was also based in Hong Kong.

Despite Krystal’s antipathy, he wasn’t a complete dud; Tyler’s personal and business connections to Asia’s elite celebrities had played a part in Synthyris’ early success. On the other hand, Krystal considered him a con man, pointing out that Synthyris had blossomed without heeding Tyler’s advice. In addition, Tyler had been obviously attracted to Jessica ever since they met, and Jessica knew it. Actually, Jessica found his attentions amusing and convenient, but Krystal absolutely hated him, no matter how hard he tried to make Krystal like him. His obliviousness to Krystal’s jealousy made it even funnier.

“So you’re the reason Krystal’s been grumpy all day,” she said to him lightly. “I told you to keep out of her sight.”

“Sorry. I wanted to surprise you, Jess, but she saw me first.”

Well. That explained the indignant text messages on Jessica’s phone:

_The lizard is here UGH_

_Oh god he saw me_

_Jess did u know he was gonna be here? if so i’m not talking to you anymore_

The prospect of Krystal not talking to her was an unappealing thought. “I don’t mind that, but it would be better if I could have warned her, you know. Now she’ll give me the cold shoulder all day.” She sighed deeply. “Oh well, I didn’t come here to have fun anyway. A CEO’s work is never done.”

Tyler grinned. “Believe me, I know. This is my fourth Derby and I never really get to watch the horses or place any bets -- I’m busy closing deals.”

Despite herself, Jessica smirked into her wineglass at Tyler’s boasting. Another reason Krystal hated him. “This is my first Derby. Krystal’s first, too. One of my horses is going to be out there.”

Jessica went to meet up with Krystal and face the music, handing her empty wine glass off to a server walking past them on the way into a suite. Tyler followed her down to the Winner’s Circle, where Krystal was waiting for Jessica. She wasn’t alone; with her was Echolocation’s trainer, Mr. Harrison, a stoop-shouldered Southern gentleman who was a distant cousin of two U.S. presidents. He had brought his two grandchildren, both boys. Krystal glared at Tyler from under her straw boater and said, “What’s this? Horses should be on the track right now, not in the stands.”

“Be nice, sweetie,” Jessica said, shaking hands with the trainer and greeting his grandchildren, who were adorably dressed up in Nautica seersucker vests and dark bowties. “Hello, Mr. Harrison. Hello, boys. You’ve gotten taller!”

The boys blushed, clearly taken with the “pretty lady”; the youngest hid behind his grandfather’s legs, while another one shyly clung to Jessica’s fingers after they had shaken hands, pulling Jessica over to sit next to him. Krystal turned her jealous glare at the boys, but only briefly. She obviously wanted to save more of her vitriol for Tyler, who, as always, attempted to start a conversation with Krystal, with minimal success.

“You know, you really shouldn’t call Jessica a horse, Krystal. Wasn’t she bullied with that nickname?”

Krystal scoffed. “Who said I was talking about my sister? My sister is gorgeous and anyone who calls her Horse Face or Horsica will have to deal with me.”

Undaunted, Tyler continued, “Victoria should come out here sometime. It’s a great atmosphere here.”

“She won’t, because Victoria actually works,” Krystal sneered, referring to her own financial advisor, one of Tyler’s ex-colleagues at Morgan Stanley. Victoria Song still worked for Morgan Stanley; she had since become close friends with Krystal.

“I’m working here, too. I am always working, events like this just put the ‘working’ in ‘networking’.” Jessica could clearly picture Tyler’s satisfied look at his play on words, even though her back was turned. She turned her attention back to the boy sitting next to her, trying to unpin the rose on his vest so that he could give it to her. How sweet.  

Krystal sullenly plopped down in the seat on the other side of her sister. Jessica leaned over and whispered, “What do you say we get out of here?”

“What?” Krystal narrowed her eyes. “Seriously? You would do that? The race hasn’t even started.”

Jessica nodded. “There were some...work-related issues that came up just now. I think it’s time to see what is going on for myself.”

“Where? Where are we going?”

“San Francisco. Home. What do you think, sweetie?”

“I’m game if you are.” Krystal glared at Tyler, who sat behind them scrolling through his phone. “As long as he isn’t coming along. Is he?”

“No, dear. Can you call and make sure our jet is ready? We’ll fly to San Francisco as soon as we reach the airport. Tyler?”

“Hm?” Tyler looked up. “Is there something you needed, Jess?”

Krystal’s hackles rose at Tyler’s usage of her nickname. “Who said you could call--”

“Honey, please.” Krystal subsided with a growl, turning to pull out her phone. Jessica turned to Tyler and pinned on a soft, winning smile -- a toned-down version of the one she’d flashed at the valet at Malpensa Airport several months ago. “My San Francisco office has an emergency. Unfortunately, it’s something that requires my attention immediately -- I can’t delegate it. Our jet is on call and we’re flying out west as soon as we get to the airport.”

“Do you need me to do anything?”

Jessica turned up the coaxing expression on her smile. “Yes, I really need you to stay here and be my representative, as the owner of Echolocation. Can you do that for me, Tyler? Please? I’d really appreciate it. Mr. Harrison --” the horse trainer bowed slightly when Jessica motioned to him “--will take care of the details, you just need to be there to represent me. Okay?”

Tyler nodded quickly. “Of course! It would be my absolute honor to represent you.”

“Thank you. I’ll call you later, Tyler.”

Krystal growled. Jessica pinched her. “Ow!”

“Not sorry. Did you make the call?”

“Yeah, yeah. The car will be here in ten minutes.” Krystal glowered at Tyler. “Let’s go out front and wait, the crowds will slow us down too much.”

Tyler frowned at Krystal, but then turned and smiled at Jessica. “See you later, Jess.”

“Don’t you call her --”

Jessica laughed and grabbed Krystal’s arm. “Come on, honey. Let’s go home.”

Krystal, for her part, had to settle for the satisfaction of seeing Mr. Harrison’s younger grandson start to cry and shove Tyler’s leg, clearly believing that Tyler was to blame for Jessica’s departure.


End file.
